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2Dl)c Kitjer0tDc librarr for IPoimg people 



Number 

A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD 

By LUCY LARCOM 



; 



\_ 



Nr-*;>^ 



\ NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD 



OUTLINED FROM MEMORY 



LUCY LARCOM 




<^P-~^ OF CO/Vq]^ 

DEC 2 1889 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1S89 



A3 



:/ 

Copyright, 1889, 
By LUCY LARCOM. 

Ml rights reserved- 



The Riverside Prexs, Cnmbriilge, Mass., U. S.A. 
KlectrotypeJ auil Printed by U. 0- UougUton & Company. 



51 betskate tW isfeetcb 

TO MY GIRL-FRIENDS IN GENERAL ; 

AND IN PARTICULAR 

TO MY NAMESAKE-NIECE, 

LUCY LARCOM SPAULDING. 



Happy those early days, when I 
Shined in my angel-infaney ! 
— When on some gilded cloud or flower 
My gazing soul would dwell an hour, 
And in those weaker glories spy 
Some shadows of eternity : — 
Before I taught my tongue to wound 
My conscience by a sinful sound ; — 
But felt through all this fleshly dress 
Bright shoots of everlastingness. 

HeNKY VAUGH'.i'i. 

The thought of our past years in me '^.oth breed 
Perpetual benediction. 

WOBi)SWORTH. 



PREFACE. 



The following sketch was written for the 
young, at the suggestion of friends. 

My audience is understood to be composed of 
girls of all ages, and of women who have not for- 
gotten their girlhood. Such as have a friendly 
appreciation of girls — and of those who write 
for them — are also welcome to listen to as much 
of my narrative as they choose. All others are 
eavesdropj3ers, and, of course, have no right to 
criticise. 

To many, the word " autobiography " implies 

nothing but conceit and egotism. But these are 

7 gbt necessarily its characteristics. If an apple 

'i'-iossom or a ripe apple could tell its own story, 

jb would be, still more than its own, the story of 

he sunshine that smiled upon it, of the winds that 

whispered to it, of the birds that sang around it, 

f the storms that visited it, and of the motherly 

iree that held it and fed it until its petals were 

nfolded and its form developed. 

A complete autobiography would indeed be a 
icture of the outer and inner universe photo- 
raphed upon one little life's consciousness. For 



6 PRE FA CE. 

does not the whole world, seen and unseen, go to 
the making up of every human being ? The com- 
monest personal history has its value when it is 
looked at as a part of the One Infinite Life. Our 
life — which is the very best thing we have — is 
ours only that we may share it with Our Father's 
family, at their need. If we have anything with- 
in us worth giving away, to withhold it is ungen- 
erous ; and we cannot look honestly into ourselves 
without acknowledging with humility our debt 
to the lives around us for whatever of power or 
beauty has been poured into ours. 

None of us can think of ourselves as entirely 
separate beings. Even an autobiographer has to 
say " we " much oftener than " I." Indeed, there 
may be more egotism in withdrawing mysteriously 
into one's self, than in frankly unfolding oneN 
life -story, for better or worse. There may be 
more vanity in covering one's face with a veil, to 
be wondered at and guessed about, than in drawl- 
ing it aside, and saying by that act, " There ! yof 
see that I am nothing remarkable." 

However, I do not know that I altogether ap- 
prove of autobiography myself, when the subject^ 
is a person of so little importance as in the pres-, 
ent instance. Still, it may have a reason for be-^ 
ing, even in a case like this. 

Every one whose name is before the public at 
all must be aware of a common annoyance in the 
frequent requests which are made for personal 



PREFACE. 7 

facts, data for biographical paragraphs, and the 
like. To answer such requests and furnish the 
material asked for, were it desirable, would inter- 
fere seriously with the necessary work of almost 
any writer. The first impulse is to pay no atten- 
tion to them, putting them aside as mere signs of 
the ill-bred, idle curiosity of the age we live in 
about people and their private affairs. It does 
not seem to be supposed possible that authors 
can have any natural shrinking from publicity, 
like other mortals. 

But while one would not willingly encourage 
an intrusive custom, there is another view of the 
matter. The most enjoyable thing about writing 
is that the relation between writer and reader 
may be and often does become that of mutual 
friendship ; and friends naturally like to know 
dach other in a neighborly way. 
j We are all willing to gossip about ourselves, 
s'iometimes, with those who are really interested 
:in us. Girls especially are fond of exchanging 
confidences with those whom they think they can 
^^rust ; it is one of the most charming traits of a 
(simple, earnest-hearted girlhood, and they are the 
Biappiest women who never lose it entirely, 
i I should like far better to listen to my girl- 
'readers' thoughts about life and themselves than 
^to be writing out my own experiences. It is to 
'my disadvantage that the confidences, in this case, 
must all be on one side. But I have known so 



8 PREFACE. 

many girls so well in my relation to tliem of 
schoolmate, workmate, and teacher, I feel sure of 
a fair share of their sympathy and attention. 

It is hardly possible for an author to write any- 
thing sincerely without making it something of 
an autobiography. Friends can always i*ead a 
personal history, or guess at it, between the lines. 
So I sometimes think I have already written mine, 
in my verses. In them, I have found the most 
natural and free expression of myself. They have 
seemed to set my life to music for me, a life that 
has always had to be occupied with many things 
besides writing. Not, however, that I claim to 
have written much poetry : only perhaps some 
true rhymes : I do not see how there could be 
any pleasure in writing insincere ones. \ 

Whatever special interest this little narrativfe 
of mine may have is due to the social influencejs 
under which I was reared, and particularly to thjj 
prominent place held by both work and religion 
in New England half a century ago. The perioi^ 
of my growing - up had peculiarities which om • 
future history can never rep)eat, although some* ■ 
thing far better is undoubtedly already resultinf ; 
thence. Those peculiarities were the natural de • 
velopment of the seed sown by our sturdy Puritan 
ancestry. The religion of our fathers overhung ' | 
us children like the shadow of a mighty tree 
against the trunk of which we rested, while we 
looked up in wonder through the great boughs 



PREFACE. 9 

that half hid and half revealed the sky. Some 
of the boughs were already decaying, so that j^er- 
haps we began to see a little more of the sky 
than our elders ; but the tree was sound at its 
heart. There was life in it that can never be lost 
to the world. 

One thing we are at last beginning to under- 
stand, which our ancestors evidently had not 
learned ; that it is far more needful for theolo- 
gians to become as little children, than for little 
children to become theologians. They considered 
it a duty that they owed to the youngest of us, to 
teach us doctrines. And we believed in our in- 
structors, if we could not always digest their in- 
structions. We learned to reverence truth as 
they received it and lived it, and to feel that the 
search for truth was one chief end of our beina;. 

It was a pity that we were expected to begin s 
thinking upon hard siibjects so soon, and it was ' 

^ki&o a pity that we were set to hard work while 
BO young. Yet these were both inevitable results 
of circumstances then existing ; and perhaps the 
ftwo belong together. Perhaps habits of conscien- 

itious work induce thought. Certainly, right think- 

iing naturally impels people to work. 

, We learned no theories about " the dignity of 

Uabor," but we were taught to work almost as if 

Mit were a religion ; to keep at work, expecting 

/I nothing else. It was our inheritance, handed 

down from the outcasts of Eden. And for us, 



10 PREFACE. 

as for them, there was a blessing hidden in the 
curse. I am glad that I grew up under these 
wholesome Puritanic influences, as glad as I am 
that I was born a New Englander ; and I surely 
should have chosen New England for my birth- 
place before any region under the sun. 

Rich or poor, every child comes into the world 
with some imperative need of its own, which 
shapes its individuality. I believe it was Grotius 
who said, " Books are necessities of my life. Food 
and clothing I can do without, if I must." 

My " must-have " was poetry. From the first, 
life meant that to me. And, fortunately, poetry 
is not purchasable material, but an atmosphere in 
which every life may expand. I found it every- 
where about me. The children of old New Eng- 
land were always surrounded, it is true, with stub- 
born matter of fact, — the hand to hand struggle 
for existence. But that was no hindrance. Po- 
etiy must have prose to root itself in ; the home- 
lier its earth-spot, the lovelier, by contrast, its!, 
heaven-breathinc^ flowers. 

To different minds, poetry may present dif- 
ferent phases. To me, the reverent faith of the 
people I lived among, and their faithful every- 
day living, was poetry ; blossoms and trees and ' 
blue skies were poetry. God himself was poetry. 
As I grew up and lived on, friendship became 
to me the deepest and sweetest ideal of poetry. 
To live in other lives, to take their power and 



PREFACE. 11 

beauty into our own, that is poetry experienced, 
the most inspiring of all. Poetry embodied in 
persons, in lovely and lofty characters, more 
sacredly than all in the One Divine Person who 
has transfigured our human life with the glory 
of His sacrifice, — all the great lyrics and epics 
pale before that, and it is within the reach and 
comprehension of every human soul. 

To care for poetry in this way does not make 
one a poet, but it does make one feel blessedly 
rich, and quite indifferent to many things which 
are usually looked upon as desirable possessions. 
I am sincerely grateful that it was given to me, 
from childhood, to see life from this point of 
view. And it seems to me that every young girl 
would be happier for beginning her earthly journey 
with the thankful consciousness that her life does ' 
not consist in the abundance of things that she 
possesses. 

< The highest possible poetic conception is that 
C)f a life consecrated to a noble ideal. It may be 
pnable to find expression for itself except through 
lumble, even menial services, or through unself- 
sh devotion whose silent song is audible to God 
ilone ; yet such music as this might rise to heaven 
from every young girl's heart and character if 
she would set it free. In such ways it was meant 
that the world should be filled with the true poetry 
of womanhood. 

It is one of the most beautiful facts in this 



12 PREFACE. 

human existence of ours, that we remember the 
earliest and freshest part of it most vividly. 
Doubtless it was meant that our childhood should 
live on in us forever. My childhood was by no 
means a cloudless one. It had its light and shade, 
each contributing a charm which makes it wholly 
delightful in the retrospect. 

I can see very distinctly the child that I was, 

and I know how the world looked to her, far off 

; as she is now. She seems to me like my little 

i sister, at play in a garden where I can at any 

' time return and find her. I have enjoyed bringing 

her back, and letting her tell her story, almost as 

if she were somebody else. I like her better than 

I did when I was really a child, and I hope never 

to part company with her. 

I do not feel so much satisfaction in the older 
girl who comes between her and me, although she, 
too, is enough like me to be my sister, or even 
more like my young, undisciplined mother ; for 
the girl is mother of the woman. But I have to 
acknowledge her faults and mistakes as my own,*' 
while I sometimes feel like reproving her severelj| 
for her carelessly performed tasks, her habit o: 
lapsing into listless reveries, her cowardly shrink 
ing from responsibility and vigorous endeavor, 
and many other faults that I have inherited from 
her. Still, she is myself, and I could not be 
quite happy without her comradeship. 
Every phase of our life belongs to us. The moon 



PREFACE. 18 

does not, except in appearance, lose her first tliin, 
luminous curve, nor her silvery crescent, in round- 
ing to her full. The woman is still both child and 
girl, in the completeness of womanly character. 
We have a right to our entire selves, through all 
the changes of this mortal state, a claim which 
we shall doubtless carry along with us into the 
unfolding mysteries of our eternal being. Per- 
haps in this thought lies hidden the secret of 
immortal youth ; for a seer has said that " to grow 
old in heaven is to grow young." 

To take life as it is sent to us, to live it faith- 
fully, looking and striving always towards better 
life, this was the lesson that came to me from my 
early teachers. It was not an easy lesson, but it 
was a healthful one ; and I pass it on to younger 
pupils, trusting that they will learn it more 
thoroughly than I ever have. 

Young or old, we may all win inspiration to do 
our best, from the needs of a world to which the 
humblest life may be permitted to bring im- 
measurable blessings : — 

' ' For no one doth know 
What he can bestow, 
What light, streng-th, and beauty may after him go : 
Thus onward we move, 
And, save God above, 
None guesseth how wondrous the journey will prove." 

L. L. 
I Beverly, Massachusetts, 
October, 1889. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Up and Down the Lane 17 

II. Schoolroom and Meeting-Hol'se ... 37 

III. The Hymn-Book 58 

IV. Naughty Children and Fairy Tales . . 74 
V. Old New England ... . . 93 

VI. Glimpses ok Poetry ... . . 118 

VII. Beginning to work . .... 137 

VIII. By the River 162 

IX. Mountain-Friends 186 

X. Mill-Girls' Magazines 203 

XI. Reading and Studying 226 

XII. From the Merrimack to the Mississippi . 248 



A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 



UP AND DOWN THE LANE. 

It is strange that the spot of earth where we 
were born should make such a difference to us. 
People can live and grow anywhere, but people 
as well as plants have their habitat, — the place 
where they belong, and where they find their hap- 
piest, because their most natui-al life. If I had 
opened my eyes upon this planet elsewhere than 
in this northeastern corner of Massachusetts, else- 
where than on this green, rocky strip of shore 
between Beverly Bridge and the Misery Islands, 
it seems to me as if I must have been somebody 
else, and not myself. These gray ledges hold me 
by the roots, as they do the bayberry bushes, the 
sweet-fern, and the rock-saxifrage. 

When I look from my window over the tree- 
tops to the sea, I could almost fancy that from the 
deck of some one of those inward bound vessels 
the wistful eyes of the Lady Arbella might be 
turned towards this very hillside, and that mine 



18 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

were meeting hers in sympathy, across the graves 
of two hundred and fifty years. For Winthrop's 
fleet, led by the ship that bore her name, must 
have passed into harbor that way. Dear and gra- 
cious spirit ! The memory of her brief sojourn 
here has left New England more truly consecrated 
ground. Sweetest of womanly pioneers ! It is as 
if an angel in passing on to heaven just touched 
with her wins^s this rouj^h coast of ours. 

In those primitive years, before any town but 
Salem had been named, this whole region was 
known as Cape Ann Side ; and about ten years 
after Winthrop's arrival, my first ancestor's name 
appears among those of other hardy settlers of the 
neighborhood. No record has been found of his 
coming, but emigration by that time had grown 
so rapid that ships' lists were no longer carefully 
preserved. And then he was but a simple yeo- 
man, a tiller of the soil ; one who must have loved 
the sea, hov/ever, for he moved nearer and nearer 
towards it from Agawam through Wenham woods, 
until the close of the seventeenth century found 
his descendants — my ov/n great - great - grand- 
father's family — planted in a romantic home- 
stead-nook on a hillside, overlooking wide gray 
spaces of the bay at the part of Beverly known 
as "The Farms." The situation was beautiful, 
and home attachments proved tenacious, the fam- 
ily claim to the farm having only been resigned 
within the last thirty or forty years. 



#■ 



UP AND DOWN THE LANE. 19 4|^ 

I am pi'oud of my unlettered forefathers, A^lio 
were also too humbly proud to care whether their 
names would be remembered or not ; for they 
were God-fearing men, and had been persecuted 
for their faith long before they found their way 
either to Old or New England. 

The name is rather an unusual one, and has 
been traced back from Wales and the Isle of 
Wight through France to Languedoc and Pied- 
mont ; a little hamlet in the south of France still 
bearing it in what was j^robably the original 
spelling — La Combe. There is a family shield 
in existence, showing a hill surmounted by a tree, 
and a bird with spread wings above. It might 
symbolize flight in times of persecution, from the 
mountains to the forests, and thence to heaven, 
or to the free skies of this New World. 

But it is certain that my own inmiediate an- 
cestors were both indifferent and ignorant as to 
questions of pedigree, and accepted with sturdy 
dignity an inheritance of hard work and the privi- 
leges of poverty, leaving the same bequest to their 
descendants. And poverty has its privileges. 
When there is very little of the seen and tem- 
poral to intercept spiritual vision, unseen and 
eternal realities are, or may be, more clearly be- 
held. 

To have been born of people of integrity and 
profound faith in God, is better than to have in- 
herited material wealth of any kind. And to those 



20 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

seiious-minded, reticent progenitors of mine, look- 
ing' out from their lonely fields across the lonelier 
sea, their faith must have been everything. 

My father's parents both died years before my 
birth. My grandmother had been left a widow 
with a lai'ge family in my father's boyhood, and 
he, with the rest, had to toil early for a livelihood. 
She was an earnest Christian woman, of keen in- 
telligence and unusual spiritual perception. She 
was supposed by her neighbors to have the gift 
of " second sight " ; and some remarkable stories 
are told of her knowledge of distant events while 
they were occurring, or just before they took 
place. Her dignity of presence and character 
must have been noticeable. 

A relative of mine, who as a very little child, 
was taken by her mother to visit my grandmother, 
told me that she had always remembered the aged 
woman's solemnity of voice and bearing, and her 
mother's deferential attitude towards her : and she 
was so profoundly impressed by it all at the time, 
that when they had left the house, and were on _^ 
their homeward path through the woods, she looked j 
lip into her mother's face and asked in a whis- 
per, "Mother, was that God?" 

I used sometimes to feel a little resentment at 
my fate in not having been born at the old Bev- 
erly Farms home-place, as my father and uiHcks 
and aunts and some of my cousins had been, fliut 
perhaps I had more of the romantic and legend- 



UP AND DOWN THE LANE. 21 

ary charm of it than if I had been brought up 
there, for my father, in his communicative moods, 
never wearied of telling us about his childhood ; 
and we felt that we still held a birthright claim 
upon that picturesque spot through liim. Besides, 
it was only three or four miles away, and before 
the day of railroads, that was thought nothing of 
as a walk, by young or old. 

But, in fact, I first saw the light in the very 
middle of Beverly, in full view of the town clock 
and the Old South steeple. (I believe there is an 
" Old South " in nearly all these first-settled cit- 
ies and villages of Eastern Massachusetts.) The 
town wore a half -rustic air of antiquity then, 
with its old - fashioned people and weather - worn 
houses ; for I was born while my mother-century 
was still in her youth, just rounding the first 
quarter of her hundred years. 

Primitive ways of doing things had not wholly 
ceased during my childhood ; they were kept up 
in these old towns longer than elsewhere. We 
used tallow candles and oil lamps, and sat by open 
fireplaces. There was always a tinder - box in 
some safe corner or other, and fire was kindled 
by striking flint and steel upon the tinder. What 
magic it seemed to me, when I was first allowed 
to strike that wonderful spark, and light the 
kitchen fire ! * 

The fireplace was deep, and there was a " set- 
tle " in the chimney corner, where tluee of us 



22 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

youngest girls could sit together and toast our 
J;oes on the andirons (two Continental soldiers 
in full uniform, marching one after the oth^r), 
while we looked up the chimney into a square of 
blue sky, and sometimes caught a snow-flake ''on 
our foreheads ; or sometimes smirched our clean 
aprons (high-necked and long-sleeved ones, kno>\'n 
as " tiers ") against the swinging crane with its " 
sooty pot-hooks and trammels. 

The coffee-pot was set for breakfast over hot 
coals, on a three-legged bit of iron called a 
" trivet." Potatoes were roasted in the ashes, 
and the Thanksgiving turkey in a " tin-kitchen," 
the business of turning the spit being usually del- 
egated to some of us small folk, who were only too 
willing to burn our faces in 'honor of the annual 
festival. 

There were brick ovens in the chimney corner, 
where the great bakings were done ; but there 
was also an iron article called a," Dutch oven," 
in which delicious bread could be baked over the 
coals at short notice. And there never wa8*any- 
thing that tasted better than my mother's " fire- 
cake," — a short-cake spread on a smooth piece 
of board, and set up with a flat-iron before the 
blaze, browned on one side, and then turned over 
to be browned on the other. (It required some 
sleight of 'hand to do that.) If I could only be 
allowed to blow the bellows — the very old peo- 
ple called them " belluses " — when the fire began 
to get low, I was a happy girl. 



UP AND DOWN THE LANE. 23 

Cooking-stoves were coming into fashion, but 
tliey were clumsy affairs, and our elders thouglit 
tliat no cooking could be quite so nice as that 
which was done by an open fire. We younger 
ones reveled in the warm, beautiful glow, that we 
iool%back to as to a remembered sunset. There 
is no such home-splendor now. 

When supper was finished, and the tea-kettle 
was pushed back on the crane, and the backlog 
had been reduced to a heap of fiery embers, then 
was the time for listening to sailor yarns and ghost 
and witch legends. The wonder seems somehow 
to have faded out of those tales of eld since the 
gleam of red-hot coals died away from the hearth- 
stone. The shutting up of the great fireplaces 
and the introduction of stoves marks an era ; the 
\ abdication of shaggy Romance and the enthrone- 
^ment of elegant Commonplace — sometimes, alas ! 
the opposite of elegant — at the New England 
fireside. 

Have we Indeed a fireside any longer in the old 
sense ? It hardly seems as if the young people of 
to-day can really understand the poetry of Eng- 
lish domestic life, reading it, as they must, by a 
reflected illumination from the past. What would 
the " Cotter's Saturday Night " have been, if 
Burns had written it by the opaque heat of a 
stove instead of at his 

'* Wee bit ingle blinkiii' boiinilie ? " 

New England as it used to be was so much 



24 A NEIV ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

like Scotland in many of its ways of doing and 
thinking", tliat it almost seems as if that tender 
poem of hearth-and-home life had been written 
for us too. I can see the features of my father, 
who died when I was a little child, whenever I 
read the familiar verse : — 

"The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face 
They round the iug-le form a circle wide : 
The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace, 
The big ha' Bible, ance his father's pride." 

A grave, thoughtful face his was, lifted up so 
grandly amid that blooming semicircle of boys 
and girls, all gathered silently in the glow of the 
ruddy firelight ! The great family Bible had the 
look upon its leathern covers of a book that had 
never been new, and we honored it the more for 
its apparent age. Its companion was the West- 
minster Assembly's and Shorter Catechism, out of 
which my father asked us questions on Sabbath 
afternoons, when the tea-table had been cleared. 
He ended the exercise with a prayer, standing up 
with his face turned toward the wall. My most 
vivid recollection of his living face is as I saw it 
reflected in a mirror while he stood thus praying. 
His closed eyes, the paleness and seriousness of 
his countenance, awed me. I never forgot that 
look. I saw it but once again, when, a child of 
six or seven years, I was lifted to a footstool be- 
side his coffin to gaze upon his face for the last 
time. It wore the same expression that it did in 



UP AND DOWN THE LANE. 25 

prayer ; paler, but no longer care-worn ; so peace- 
ful, so noble ! They left me standing- there a 
long time, and I could not take my eyes away. I 
had never thought my father's face a beautiful 
one until then, but I believe it must have been 
so, always. 

I know that he was a studious man, fond of 
what was called " solid reading." He delighted 
in problems of navigation (he was for many 
years the master of a merchant-vessel sailing to 
various European ports), in astronomical calcula- 
tions and historical computations. A rhyming' 
genius in the town, who undertook to hit off the 
peculiarities of well-known residents, character- 
ized my father as 

"Philosophic Ben, 
Who, pointing- to the stars, cries, Land ahead ! " 

His reserved, abstracted manner, — though his 
gravity concealed a fund of rare humor, — kept 
us children somewhat aloof from him ; but my 
mother's temperament formed a complete contrast 
to his. She was chatty and social, rosy-cheeked 
and dimpled, with bright blue eyes and soft, dark, 
curling hair, which she kept pinned up under her 
white lace cap-border. Not even the eldest child 
remembei'ed her without her cap, and when some 
of us asked her why she never let her pretty curls 
be visible, she said, — 

" Your father liked to see me in a cap. I put 
it on soon after we were married, to please him ; 



26 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

I always have worn it, and I always shall wear it, 
for the same reason." 

My mother had that sort of sunshiny nature 
which easily shifts to shadow, like the atmosphere 
of an April day. Cheerfulness held sway with 
her, except occasionally, when her domestic cares 
grew too overwhelming ; but her spirits rebounded 
quickly from discouragement. 

Her father was the only one of our grandpar- 
ents who had survived to my time, — of French 
descent, piquant, merry, exceedingly polite, and 
very fond of us children, whom he was always 
treating to raisins and peppermints and rules for 
good behavior. He had been a soldier in the 
Revolutionar}^ War, — the greatest distinction we 
could imagine. And he was also the sexton of 
the oldest church in town, — the Old South, — 
and had charge of the winding-up of the town 
clock, and the ringing of the bell on week-days 
and Sundays, and the tolling for funerals, — into 
which mysteries he sometimes allowed us young- 
sters a furtive glimpse. I did not believe that 
there was another grandfather so delightful as 
ours in all the world. 

Uncles, aunts, and cousins were plentiful in the 
family, but they did not live near enough for us 
to see them very often, excepting one aunt, my 
father's sister, for whom I was named. She was 
fair, with large, clear eyes that seemed to look far 
into one's heart, with an expression at once peng- 



UP AND DOWN THE LANE. 27 

trating and benignant. To my cliildish imagina- 
tion she was an embodiment of serene and lofty 
goodness. I wished and hoped that by bearing 
her baptismal name I might become like her ; 
and when I found out its signification (I learned 
that " Lucy " means " with light "), I wished it 
more earnestly still. For her beautiful character 
was just such an illumination to my young life 
as I should most desire mine to be to the lives of 
others. 

My aunt, like my father, was always studying 
something. Some map or book always lay open 
before her, when I went to visit her, in her pic- 
turesque old house, with its sloping roof and tall 
well-sweep. And she always brought out some 
book or picture for me from her quaint old-fash- 
ioned chest of drawers. I still possess the " Chil- 
dren in the Wood," which she gave me, as a 
keepsake, when I was about ten years old. 

Our relatives form the natural setting of our 
childhood. We understand ourselves best and 
are best understood by others through the persons 
who came nearest to us in our earliest years. 
Those larger planets held our little one to its 
orbit, and lent it their brightness. Happy indeed 
is the infancy which is surrounded only by the 
loving and the good I 

Besides those who were of my kindred, I had 
several aunts by courtesy, or rather by the privi- 
lege of neighborhood, who seemed to belong to 



28 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

my babyhood. Indeed, the family hearthstone 
came near being the scene of a tragedy to me, 
through the blind fondness of one of these. 

The adjective is literal. This dear old lady, 
almost sightless, sitting in a low chair far in the 
chimney corner, where she had been placed on her 
first call to see the new baby, took me upon her 
lap, and — so they say — unconsciously let me 
slip off into the coals. I was rescued unsinged, 
however, and it was one of the earliest accom- 
plishments of my infancy to tiiread my poor, half- 
blind Aunt Stanley's needles for her. We were 
close neighbors and gossips until my fourth year. 
Many an hour I sat by her side drawing a needle 
and thread through a bit of calico, under the de- 
lusion that I was sewing, while she repeated all 
sorts of juvenile sing-song, of which her memory 
seemed full, for my entertainment. There used to 
be a legend current among my brothers and sis- 
ters that this aunt unwittingly taught me to use 
a reprehensible word. One of her ditties began 
with the lines : — 

" Miss Lucy was a charming child ; 
She never said, ' I won't.' " 

After hearing this once or twice, the willful nega- 
tive was continually upon my lips ; doubtless a 
symptom of what was dormant within — a will 
perhaps not quite so aggressive as it was obstinate. 
But she meant only to praise me and please me |^ 



UP AND DOWN THE LANE. 29 

and dearly I loved to stay with her in her cozy 
np-stairs room across the lane, that the sun looked 
into nearly all day. 

Another adopted aunt lived down-stairs in the 
same house. This one was a sober woman ; life 
meant business to her, and she taught me to sew 
in earnest, with a knot in the end of my thread, 
although it was only upon clothing for my rag- 
children — absurd creatures of my own invention, 
limbless and destitute of features, except as now 
and then one of my older sisters would, upon my 
earnest petition, outline a face for one of them, 
with pen and ink. I loved them, nevertheless, 
far better than I did the London doll that lay in 
waxen state in an upper drawer at home, — the 
fine lady that did not wish to be played with, 
but only to be looked at and admired. 

This latter aunt I regarded as a woman of great 
possessions. She owned the land beside us and 
opposite us. Her well was close to our dooi", — 
a well of the coldest and clearest water I ever 
drank, and it abundantly supplied the whole 
neighborhood. 

The hill behind her house was our general 
playground ; and I supposed she owned that, too, 
since through her dooryard, and over her stone 
wall, was our permitted thoroughfare thither. I 
imagined that those were her buttercups that we 
gathered when we got over the wall, and held un- 
der each other's chin, to see, by the reflection, who 



30 A NEW ENGLAND GIELIIOOD. 

was fond of butter ; and surely the yellow toad- 
flax (we called it " lady's slipper ") that grew in 
the rock-crevices was hers, for we found it no- 
where else. 

The blue-gill-over-the-ground unmistakably be- 
longed to her, for it carpeted an unused trian- 
gular corner of her garden inclosed by a leaning- 
fence gray and gold with sea-side lichens. Its 
blue was beautiful, but its pungent earthy odor — 
I can smell it now — repelled us from the damp 
corner where it grew. It made us think of graves 
and ghosts ; and I think we were forbidden to go 
there. We much preferred to sit on the sunken 
curbstones, in the shade of the broad-leaved bur- 
docks, and shape their spiny balls into chairs and 
cradles and sofas for our dollies, or to " play 
school " on the doorsteps, or to climb over the 
wall, and feel the freedom of the hill. 

We were a neighborhood of large families, and 
most of us enjoyed the privilege of " a little whole- 
some neglect." Our tether was a long one, and 
when, grown a little older, we occasionally asked 
to have it lengthened, a maternal " I don't care " 
amounted to almost unlimited liberty. 

The hill itself was well-nigh boundless in its 
capacities for juvenile occupation. Besides its 
miniature pi^ecipices, that walled in some of the 
neighbors' gardens, and its slanting slides, worn 
smooth by the feet of many childish generations, 
there were partly quarried ledges, which haw 



UP AND DOWN THE LANE. 31 

shaped themselves into rock-stairs, carpeted with 
lovely mosses, in various patterns. These were 
the winding ways up our castle-towxM-s, with break- 
fast-rooms and boudoirs along the landings, where 
we set our tables for expected guests with bits of 
broken china, and left our numerous rag-childi'en 
tucked in asleep under mullein-blankets or plan- 
tain-coverlets, while we ascended to the topmost 
turret to watch for our ships coming in from 
sea. 

For leagues of ocean were visible froni the tip- 
top of the ledge, a tiny cleft peak that held always 
a little rain-pool for thirsty birds that now and 
then stopped as they flew over, to clip their beaks 
and glance shyly at us, as if they wished to share 
our games. We could see the steeples and smokes 
of Salem in the distance, and the hill, as it de- 
scended, lost itself in mowing fields that slid again 
into the river. Beyond that was Rial Side and 
Folly Hill, and they looked so very far off ! 

They called it "over to Green's" across the 
river. I thought it was because of the thick 
growth of dark green junipers, that covered the 
cliff-side down to the water's edge ; but they were 
only giving the name of the farmer who owned the 
land. Whenever there was an unusual barking 
of dogs in the distance, they said it was " over to 
Green's." That barking of dogs made the place 
seem very mysterious to me. 

Our lane ran parallel with the hill and the 



32 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

mowing fields, and down our lane we were always 
free to go. It was a genuine lane, all ups and 
downs, and too narrow for a street, although at 
last they have leveled it and widened it, and made 
a commonplace thoroughfare of it. I am glad 
that my baby life knew it in all its queer, original 
irregularities, for it seemed to have a character of 
its own, like many of its inhabitants, all the more 
charming because it was unlike anything but it- 
self. The hill, too, is lost now, buried under 
houses. 

Our lane came to an end at some bars that let 
us into another lane, — or rather a footpath or 
cowpath, bordered with cornfields and orchards. 
We were still on home ground, for my father's 
vegetable garden and orchard were here. After 
a long straight stretch, the path suddenly took an 
abrupt turn, widening into a cart road, then to a 
tumble-down wharf, and there was the river ! 

An " arm of the sea" I was told that our river 
was, and it did seem to reach around the town 
and hold it in a liquid embrace. Twice a day the 
tide came in and filled its muddy bed with a 
sparkling flood. So it was a river only half the 
time, but at high tide it was a river indeed ; all 
that a child could wish, with its boats and its 
sloops, and now and then that most available 
craft for a crew of children — a gundalow. We 
easily ti-ansformed the spelling into "gondola," 
and in fancy were afloat on Venetian waters, un- 



UP AND DOWN THE LANE. 83 

der some overhanging balcony, perhaps at the 
very Palace of the Doges, — willingly blind to 
the reality of a raudscow leaning against some 
rickety wharf posts, covered with barnacles. 

Sometimes a neighbor boy who was the fortunate 
ojvner of a boat would row us down the river — 
a fearful, because a forbidden, joy. The widening 
waters made us tremble with dread and longing 
for what might be bej^ond ; for when we had 
passed vuider the piers of the bridge, the estuary 
broadened into the harbor and the open sea. 
Then somebody on board would tell a story of 
children who had drifted away beyond the har- 
bor-bar and the light-house, and were drowned ; 
and our boyish helmsman would begin to look 
grave and anxious, and would turn his boat and 
row us back swiftly to the safe gundalow and 
tumbledown wharf. 

The cars rush into the station now, right over 
our riverside playground. .1 can often hear the 
mirthful shout of boys and girls under the shriek 
of the steam whistle. No dream of a railroad 
had then come to the quiet old town, but it was a 
wild train of children that ran homeward in the 
twilight up the narrow lane, with wind-shod feet, 
and hair flying like the manes of young colts, and 
light hearts bounding to their own footsteps. How 
good and dear our plain, two-story dwelling-house 
looked to us as we came in sight of it, and what 
sweet odors stole out to meet us from the white- 



84 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

fenced inclosure of our small garden, — from 
peach-trees and lilac-bushes in bloom, from ber- 
gamot and balm and beds of camomile ! 

Sometimes we would find the pathetic figure of 
white-haired Larkin Moore, the insane preacher, 
his two canes laid aside, waiting in our dooryard 
for any audience that he could gather : boys and 
girls were as welcome as anybody. He would 
seat us in a row on the green slope, and give us 
a half hour or so of incoherent exhortation, to 
which we attended respectfully, if not reverently ; 
for his whole manner showed that, though de- 
mented, he was deeply in earnest. He seemed 
there in the twilight like a dazed angel who had 
lost his way, and had half forgotten his errand, 
which yet he must try to tell to anybody who 
would listen. 

I have heard my mother say that sometimes 
he would ask if he might take her baby in his 
arms and sing to it ; and that though she was half 
afraid herself, the baby — I like to fancy I was 
that baby — seemed to enjoy it, and played glee- 
fully with the old man's flowing gray locks. 

Good Larkin Moore was well known through 
the two neighboring counties, Essex and Middle- 
sex. We saw him afterwards on the banks of the 
Merrimack. He always wore a loose calico tunic 
over his trousers ; and, when the mood came upon 
him, he started off with two canes, — seeming to 
think he could travel faster as a quadruped than 



UP AND DOWN THE LANE. 35 

as a biped. He was entirely harmless ; his only 
wish was to preach or to sing. 

A chai-acteristie anecdote used to be told of 
him : that once, as a stage-coach containing only 
a few passengers passed him on the road, he asked 
the favor of a seat on the top, and was refused. 
There were many miles between him and his des- 
tination. But he did not upbraid the ungracious 
driver ; he only swung his two canes a little more 
briskly, and kept abreast of the horses all the 
way, entering the town side by side with the 
inhospitable vehicle — a running reproach to the 
churl on the box. 

There was another wanderer, a blind woman, 
whom my mother treated with great respect on 
her annual pilgrimages. She brought with her 
some printed rhymes to sell, purporting to be com- 
posed by herself, and beginning with the verse : — 

" I, Nancy Welch, was born and bred 
In Essex County, Marblebead. 
And when I was an infant quite 
The Lord deprived nie of my sight." 

I labored under the delusion that blindness was 
a sort of insanity, and I used to run away when 
this pilgrim came, for she was not talkative, like 
Larkin Moore. I fancied she disliked children, 
and so I shrank from her. 

There were other odd estrays going about, who 
were either well known, or could account for them- 
selves. The one human phenomenon that filled 



36 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

US little ones with mortal terror was an unknown 
" man with a pack on his back." I do not know 
what we thought he would do with us, but the 
sight of one always sent us breathless with fright 
to the shelter of the maternal wing. I did not at 
all like the picture of Christian on his way to tlje 
wicket-gate, in " Pilgrim's Progress," before I Lad 
read the book, because he had "a pack on his 
back." But there was really nothing to be afraid 
of in those simple, honest old times. I suppose 
we children would not have known how happy 
and safe we were, in our secluded lane, if we had 
not conjured up a few imaginary fears. 

Long as it is since the rural features of our 
lane were entirely obliterated, my feet often go 
back and press, in memory, its grass-grown bor- 
ders, and in delight and liberty I am a child 
again. Its narrow limits were once my whole 
known world. Even then it seemed to me as if 
it might lead everywhere ; and it was indeed but 
the beginning of a road which must lengthen and 
widen beneath my feet forever. 



II. 

SCHOOLROOM AND MEETING-HOUSE. 

There were only two or three houses between 
ours and the main street, and then our lane came 
out directly opposite the finest house in town, a 
three -story edifice of brick, painted white, the 
" Colonel's " residence. There was a sj^acious 
garden behind it, from which we caught glimpses 
and perfumes of unknown flowers. Over its high 
walls hung boughs of splendid great yellow sweet 
apples, which, when they fell on the outside, we 
children considered as our perquisites. When I 
first read about the apples of the Hesperides, my 
idea of them was that they were like the Colo- 
nel's "pumpkin-sweetings." 

Beyond the garden were wide green fields 
which reached eastward down to the beach. It 
was one of those large old estates which used to 
give to the very heart of our New England coast- 
towns a delightful breeziness and roominess. 

A coach-and-pair was one of the appurtenances 
of this estate, with a coachman on the box ; and 
when he took the family out for an airing we 
small children thought it was a sort of Cinderella- 
spectacle, prepared expressly for us. 



38 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

It was not, however, quite so interesting as the 
Boston stage-coach, that rolled regularly every 
day past the head of our lane into and out of its 
head - quarters, a big, unpainted stable close at 
hand. This stage-coach, in our minds, meant the 
city, — twenty miles off; an immeasurable dis- 
tance to us then. Even our elders did not go 
there very often. 

In those early days, towns used to give each 
other nicknames, like school-boys. Ours was called 
" Bean-town " ; not because it was especially de- 
voted to the cultivation of this leguminous edible, 
but probably because it adhered a long time to 
the Puritanic custom of saving Sunday-work by 
baking beans on Saturday evening, leaving them 
in the oven over night. After a while, as fami- 
lies left off heating their ovens, the bean -pots 
were taken by the village baker on Saturday af- 
ternoon, who returned them to each house early 
on Sunday morning, with the pan of brown 
bread that went with them. The jingling of the 
baker's bells made the matter a public one. 

The towns through which our stage - coach 
passed sometimes called it the " bean-pot." The 
Jehu who drove it was something of a wag. 
Once, coming through Charlestown, while waiting 
in the street for a resident passenger, he was 
hailed by another resident who thought him ob- 
structing the passage, with the shout, — 

" Halloo there ! Get your old bean-pot out of 
the way ! " 



SCHOOLROOM AND MEETING-HOUSE. 39 

" I will, when I have got my pork In," was the 
ready reply. What the sobriquet of Charlestown 
was, need not be explained. 

We had a good opportunity to watch both 
coaches, as my father's shop was just at the head 
of the lane, and we went to school up-stairs in 
the same building. After he left off going to sea, 
— before my birth, — my father took a store for 
the sale of what used to be called " West India 
goods," and various other domestic commodities. 

The school was kept by a neighbor whom 
everybody called " Aunt Hannah." It took in all 
the little ones about us, no matter how young 
they were, provided they could walk and talk, and 
were considered capable of learning their letters. 

A ladder-like flight of stairs on the outside of 
the house led up to the schoolroom, and another 
flight, also outside, took us down into a bit of a 
garden, where grew tansy and spearmint and 
southernwood and wormwood, and, among other 
old - fashioned flowers, an abundance of many- 
tinted four o'clocks, whose regular afternoon- 
opening just at the close of school, was a daily 
wonder to us babies. From the schoolroom win- 
dow we could watch the slow hands of the town 
clock, and get a peep at what was going on in 
the street, although there was seldom anybody in 
sight excejit the Colonel's gardener or coachman, 
going into or out of the driveway directly op- 
posite. It was a very still street ; the front win- 



40 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

dows of the houses were generally closed, and a 
few military-looking Lombardy poplars stood like 
sentinels on guard before them. 

Another shop — a very small one — joined my 
father's, where three shoemakers, all of the same 
name — the name our lane went by — sat at their 
benches and plied their "waxed ends.*' One of 
them, an elderly man, tall and erect, used to come 
out regularly every day, and stand for a long time 
at the corner, motionless as a post, with his nose 
and chin pointing skyward, usually to the north- 
east. I watched his face with wonder, for it was 
said that " Uncle John " was " weatherwise," and 
knew all the secrets of the heavens. 

Aunt Hannah's schoolroom and " our shop " 
are a blended memory to me. As I was only a 
baby when I began to go to school, I was often 
sent down-stairs for a half hour's recreation not 
permitted to the older ones. I think I looked 
upon both school and shop entirely as places of 
entertainment for little children. 

The front shop-window was especially interest- 
ing to us children, for there were in it a few glass 
jars containing sticks of striped barley-candy, and 
red and white peppermint-drops, and that delect- 
able achievement of the ancient confectioner's 
art, the " Salem gibraltar." One of my first rec- 
ollections of my father is connected with that win- 
dow. He had taken me into the shop with him 
after dinner, — I was perhaps two years old, — 



SCHOOL-ROOM AND MEETING-HOUSE. 41 

and I was playing beside him on the counter 
when one of his old sea-comrades came in, whom 
we knew as " Captain Cross." The Captain tried 
to make friends with me, and, to seal the bond, 
asked my father to take down from its place of 
exhibition a strip of red peppermints dro2:)ped on 
white paper, in a style I particularly admired, 
which he twisted around my neck, saying, — 

" Now I 've bought you ! Now you are my 
girl. Come, go home with me ! " 

His words sounded as if he meant them. I 
took it all in earnest, and ran, scared and scream- 
ing, to my father, dashing down the sugar-plums 
I wanted so much, and refusing even to bestow a 
glance upon my amused purchaser. My father 
pacified me by taking me on his shoulders and 
carrying me "• pickaback " up and down the shop, 
and I clung to him in the happy consciousness 
that I belonged to him, and that he would not let 
anybody else have me ; though I did not feel 
quite easy until Captain Cross disappeared. I 
suppose that this little incident has always re- 
mained in my memory because it then for the 
first time became a fact in my consciousness that 
my father really loved me as I loved him. He 
was not at all a demonstrative man, and any pet- 
ting that he gave us children could not fail to 
make a permanent impression. 

I think that must have been also the last spe- 
cial attention I received from him, for a little 



42 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

sister appeared soon after, whose coming was 
announced to me with the accompaniment of cer- 
tain mysterious hints about my nose being out of 
joint. I examined that feature carefully in the 
looking-glass, but could not discover anything un- 
usual about it. It was quite beyond me to imag- 
ine that our innocent little baby could have any- 
thing to do with the possible disfigurement of my 
face, but she did absorb the fondness of the whole 
family, myself included, and she became my fa- 
ther's playmate and darling, the very apple of his 
eye. I used sometimes to wish I were a baby too, 
so that he would notice me, but gradually I ac- 
cepted the situation. 

Aunt Hannah used her kitchen or her sitting- 
room for a schoolroom, as best suited her conven- 
ience. We were delighted observers of her culi- 
nary operations and other employments. If a 
baby's head nodded, a little bed was made for it 
on a soft " comforter " in the corner, where it had 
its nap out undisturbed. But this did not often 
happen ; there were so many interesting things 
going on that we seldom became sleepy. 

Aunt Hannah was very kind and motherly, but 
she kept us in fear of her ferule, which indicated 
to us a possibility of smarting palms. This ferule 
was shaped much like the stick with which she 
stirred her hasty pudding for dinner, — I thought 
it was the same, — and I found myself caught in 
a whirlwind of family laughter by reporting at 



SCHOOLROOM AND MEETING-HOUSE. 43 

home that " Aunt Hannah punished the scholars 
with the pudding-stick." 

There was one colored boy in school, who did 
not sit on a bench, like the rest, but on a block of 
wood that looked like a backlog turned endwise. 
Aunt Hannah often called him a " blockhead," 
and I supposed it was because he sat on that block. 
Sometimes, in his absence, a boy was made to sit 
in his place for punishment, for being a " block- 
head " too, as I imagined. I hoped I should never 
be put there. Stupid little girls received a dif- 
ferent treatment, — an occasional rap on the head 
with the teacher's thimble ; accompanied with 
a half - whispered, impatient ejaculation, which 
sounded very much like " Numskull ! " I think 
this was a rare occurrence, however, for she was 
a good-natured, much-enduring woman. 

One of our greatest school pleasures was to 
watch Aunt Hannah spinning on her flax-wheel, 
wetting her thumb and forefinger at her lips to 
twist the thread, keeping time, meanwhile, to some 
quaint old tune with her foot upon the treadle. 

A verse of one of her hymns, which I never 
heard anybody else sing, resounds in the farthest 
corner of my memory yet : — 

" Whither g-oest thou, pilgrim stranger, 
Wandering' through this lowly vale ? 
Knowest thou not 't is full of danger ? 
And will not thy courage fail ? " 

Then a little pause, and the refrain of the answer 



44 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

broke in with a change, quick and jubilant, the 
treadle moving more rapidly, also : — 

" No, I 'm bound for the kingdom ! 
Will you go to g'lory with me ? 
Hallelujah ! Praise the Lord ! " 

I beffan to 2:0 to school when I was about two 
years old, as other children about us did. The 
mothers of those large families had to resort to 
some means of keeping their little ones out of 
mischief, while they attended to their domestic du- 
ties. Not much more than that sort of temporary 
guardianship was expected of the good dame who 
had us in charge. 

But I learned my letters in a few days, stand- 
ing at Aunt Hannah's knee while she pointed 
them out in the spelling-book with a pin, skipping 
over the " a' b abs " into words of one and two syl- 
lables, thence .taking a flying leap into the New 
Testament, in which there is concurrent family 
testimony that I was reading at the age of two 
years and a half. Certain it is that a few pas- 
sages in the Bible, whenever I read them now, 
do not fail to bring before me a vision of Aunt 
Hannah's somewhat sternly smiling lips, with her 
spectacles just above them, far down on her nose, 
encouraging me to pronounce the hard words. I 
think she tried to choose for me the least difficult 
verses, or perhaps those of which she was her- 
self especially fond. Those which I distinctly re- 
call are the Beatitudes, the Twenty-third Psalm, 



SCHOOLROOM AND MEETING-HOUSE. 45 

parts of the first and fourteenth chapters of the 
Gospel of St. John, and the thirteenth chapter 
of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. 

I liked to say over the " Blesseds," — the short- 
est ones best, — about the meek and the pure in 
heart ; and the two " In the beginnings," both in 
Genesis and John. Every child's earliest and 
proudest Scriptural conquest in school was, al- 
most as a matter of course, the first verse in the 
Bible. 

But the passage which I learned first, and most 
delighted to repeat after Aunt Hannah, — I think 
it must have been her favorite too, — was, " Let 
not your heart be troubled. In my Father's house 
are many mansions." 

The Voice in the Book seemed so tender ! Some- 
body was speaking who had a heart, and who 
knew that even a little child's heart was some- 
times troubled. And it was a Voice that called 
us somewhere ; to the Father's house, with its 
many mansions, so sunshiny and so large. 

It was a beautiful vision that came to me with 
the words, — I could see it best with my eyes 
shut, — a great, dim Door standing ajar, opening 
out of rosy morning mists, overhung with swaying 
vines and arching boughs that were full of birds ; 
and from beyond the Door, the ripple of running 
waters, and the sound of many happy voices, and 
above them all the One Voice that was saying, " I 
go to prepare a place for you." The vision gave 



46 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

me a sense of freedom, fearless and infinite. 
What was there to be afraid of anywhere ? Even 
we little children could see the open door of our 
Father's house. We were playing around its 
threshold now, and we need never wander out of 
sight of it. The feeling was a vague one, but it 
was like a remembrance. The spacious mansions 
were not far away. They were my home. I had 
known them, and should return to them again. 

This dim half-memory, which perhaps comes to 
all children, I had felt when younger still, al- 
most before I could walk. Sitting on the floor 
in a square of sunshine made by an open window, 
the leaf -shadows from great boiighs outside dan- 
cing and wavering around me, I seemed to be 
talking to them and they to me in unknown 
tongues, that left within me an ecstasy yet unfor- 
gotten. Those shadows had brought a message 
to me from an unseen Somewhere, which my 
baby heart was to keep forever. The wonder of 
that moment often returns. Shadow-traceries of 
bough and leaf still seem to me like the hiero- 
glyphics of a lost language. 

The stars brought me the same feeling. I re- 
member the surprise they were to me, seen for the 
fii'st time. One evening, just before I was put to 
bed, I was taken in somebody's arms — my sis- 
ter's, I think — outside the door, and lifted up 
under the dark, still, clear sky, splendid with 
stars, thicker and nearer earth than they have 



SCHOOLROOM AND MEETING-HOUSE. 47 

ever seemed since. All my little being shaped it- 
self into a subdued, delighted " Oh ! " And then 
the exultant thought flitted through the mind of 
the reluctant child, as she was carried in, " Why, 
that is the roof of the house I live in." After 
that I always went to sleep happier for the feel- 
ing that the stars were outside there in the dark, 
though I could not see them. 

I did firmly believe that I came from some 
other country to this ; I had a vague notion that 
we were all here on a journey, — that this was 
not the place where we really belonged. Some of 
the family have told me that before I could talk 
plainly, I used to run about humming the sen- 
tence — 

" My father and mother 
Shall come unto the land," 

sometimes varying it with, — 

" My brothers and sisters 
Shall come unto the land ; ' ' 

Nobody knew where I had caught the words, 
but I chanted them so constantly that my brother 
wrote them down, with chalk, on the under side 
of a table, where they remained for years. My 
thought about that other land may have been 
only a baby's dream ; but the dream was very 
real to me. I used to talk, in sober earnest, 
about what happened " before I was a little girl, 
and came here to live " ; and it did seem to me 
as if I remembered. 



48 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

But I was hearty and robust, full of frolicsome 
health, and very fond of the matter-of-fact world 
I lived in. My sturdy little feet felt the solid 
earth beneath them. I grew with the sprouting 
grass, and enjoyed my life as the biids and birds 
seemed to enjo}^ theirs. It was only as if the bud 
and the bird and the dear warm earth knew, in 
the same dumb way that I did, that all their joy 
and sweetness came to them out of the sky. 

These recollections, that so distinctly belong 
to the baby Myself, before she could speak her 
thoughts, though clear and vivid, are difficult to 
put into shape. But other grown-up children, 
in looking back, will doubtless see many a trail- 
ing cloud of glory, that lighted their unconscious 
infancy from within and from beyond. 

I was quite as literal as I was visionary in my 
mental renderings of the New Testament, read at 
Aunt Hannah's knee. I was much taken with 
the sound of words, without any thought of their 
meaning — a habit not always outgrown with 
childhood. The " sounding brass and tinkling 
cymbals," for instance, in the Epistle to the Corin- 
thians, seemed to me things to be greatly desired. 
" Charity " was an abstract idea. I did not know 
what it meant. But " tinkling cymbals " one could 
make music with. I wished I could get hold of 
them. It never occurred to me that the Apostle 
meant to speak of their melody slightingly. 

At meeting, where I began to go also at two 



SCHOOLROOM AND MEETING-HOUSE. 49 

years of age, I made my own private interpreta- 
tions of the Bible readings. They were absurd 
enough, but after getting laughed at a few times 
at home for making them public, I escaped morti- 
fication by forming a habit of great reserve as to 
my Sabbath-day thoughts. 

When the minister read, " Cut it down : why 
cumbereth it the ground ? " I thought he meant to 
say " cu-curabereth." These vegetables grew on 
the ground, and I had heard that they were not 
very good for people to eat. I honestly supposed 
that the New Testament forbade the cultivation 
of cucumbers. 

And " Galilee " I understood as a mispronun- 
ciation of " gallery." " Going up into Galilee " 
I interpreted into clattering up the uncarpeted 
stairs in the meeting-house porch, as the boys did, 
with their squeaking brogans, looking as restless 
as imprisoned monkeys after they had got into 
those conspicuous seats, where they behaved as if 
they thought nobody could see their pranks. I 
did not think it could be at all nice to " go up 
into Galilee." 

I had an " Aunt Nancy," an uncle's wife, to 
whom I was sometimes sent for safe -keeping 
when house - cleaning or anything unusual was 
going on at home. She was a large - featured 
woman, with a very deep masculine voice, and she 
conducted family worship herself, kneeling at 
prayer, which was not the Orthodox custom. 



60 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

She always began by saying, — 

" Oh Lord, Thou knowest that we are all 
groveling worms of the dust." I thought she 
meant that we all looked like wriggling red earth- 
worms, and tried to make out the resemblance 
in my mind, but could not. I unburdened my 
difficulty at home, telling the family that " Aunt 
Nancy got down on the floor and said we were 
all gruhhelin' worms," begging to know whether 
everybody did sometimes have to crawl about in 
the dust. 

A little later, I was much puzzled as to whether 
I was a Jew or a Gentile. The Bible seemed to 
divide people into these two classes only. The 
Gentiles were not well spoken of : I did not want 
to be one of them. They talked about Abraham 
and Isaac and Jacob and the rest, away back to 
Adam, as if they were our forefathers (there was 
a time when I thought that Adam and JEve and 
Cain and Abel were our four fathers) ; and yet 
I was very sure that I was not a Jew. When I 
ventured to ask, I was told that we were all Chris- 
tians or heathen now. That did not help me 
much, for I thought that only grown-up j^ersons 
could be Christians, from which it followed that 
all children must be heathen. Must I think of 
myself as a heathen, then, until I should be old 
enough to be a Christian? It was a shocking 
conclusion, but I could see no other answer to my 
question, and I felt ashamed to ask again. 



SCHOOLROOM AND MEETING-HOUSE. 51 

My self-invented theory about the hnman race 
was that Adam and Eve were very tall people, 
taller than the tallest trees in the Garden of 
Eden, before they were sent out of it ; but that 
they then began to dwindle ; that their children 
had ever since been getting smaller and smaller, 
and that by and by the inhabitants of the woidd 
would be no bigger than babies. 1 was afraid I 
should stop growing while I was a child, and I 
used to stand on the footstool in the pew, and try 
to stretch myself up to my mother's height, to 
imagine how it would seem to be a woman. I 
hoped I should be a tall one. I did not wish to 
be a diminishing specimen of the race ; — an anx- 
iety which proved to be entirely groundless. 

The Sabbath mornings in those old times had 
a peculiar charm. They seemed so much cleaner 
than other mornings ! The roads and the grassy 
footpaths seemed fresher, and the air itself purer 
and more wholesome than on week-days. Satur- 
day afternoon and evening were regarded as part 
of the Sabbath (we were taught that it was 
heathenish to call the day Sunday) ; work and 
playthings were laid aside, and every body, as 
well as every thing, was subjected to a rigid reno- 
vation. Sabbath morning would not have seemed 
like itself without a clean house, a clean skin, and 
tidy and spotless clothing. 

The Saturday's baking was a great event, the 
brick oven beino: heated to receive the flour 



52 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

bread, the flour-and-Indian, and the rye-and-Indian 
bread, the traditional pot of beans, the Indian 
pudding, and the pies ; for no further cooking 
was to be done until Monday. We smaller girls 
thought it a great privilege to be allowed to watch 
the oven till the roof of it should be " white-hot," 
so that the coals could be shoveled out. 

Then it was so still, both out of doors and 
within ! We were not allowed to walk anywhere 
except in the yard or garden. I remember won- 
dering whether it was never Sabbath-day over 
the fence, in the next field ; whether the field 
was not a kind of heathen field, since we could 
only go into it on week-days. The wild flowers 
over there were perhaps Gentile blossoms. Only 
the flowers in the garden were well-behaved Chris- 
tians. It was Sabbath in the house, and possibly 
even on the doorstep ; but not much farther. The 
town itself was so quiet that it scarcely seemed to 
breathe. The sound of wheels was seldom heard 
in the streets on that day; if we heard it, we 
expected some unusual explanation. 

I liked to go to meeting, — not wholly oblivious 
to the fact that going there sometimes implied 
wearing a new bonnet and my best white di-ess 
and muslin " vandyke," of which adornments, if 
very new, I vainly supposed the whole congrega- 
tion to be as admiringly aware as I was myself. 

But my Sabbath-day enjoyment was not wholly 
without drawbacks. It was so hard, sometimes, 



SCHOOLROOM AND MEETING-HOUSE. 63 

to stand up through the " long prayer," and to sit 
still through the " ninthlies," and " teuthlies," 
and " finallys" of the sermon I It was impressed 
upon me that good children were never restless 
in meeting, and never laughed or smiled, how- 
ever their big brothers tempted them with winks 
or grimaces. And I did want to be good. 

1 was not tall enough to see very far over the 
top of the pew. I think there were only three 
persons that came within range of my eyes. One 
was a dark man with black curly hair brushed 
down in " bangs " over his eyebrows, who sat be- 
hind a green baize curtain near the outside door, 
peeping out at me, as I thought. I had an im- 
pression that he was the " tidy-man," though that 
personage had become mythical long before my 
day. He had a dragonish look, to me ; and I 
tried never to meet his glance. 

But I did sometimes gaze more earnestly than 
was polite at a deai*, demure little lady who sat in 
the corner of the pew next ours, her downcast 
eyes shaded by a green calash, and her hidden 
right hand gently swaying a long-handled Chinese 
fan. She was the deacon's wife, and I felt greatly 
interested in her movements and in the expres- 
sion of her face, because I thought she repre- 
sented the people they called " saints," who were, 
as I supposed, about the same as first cousins to 
the angels. 

The third figure in sight was the minister. I 



64 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

did not think he ever saw me ; he was talking 
to the older people, — usually telling them how 
wicked they were. He often said to them that 
there was not one good person among them ; but 
I supposed he excepted himself. He seemed to 
me so very good that I was very much afraid of 
him. I was a little afraid of my father, but then 
he sometimes played with us children : and be- 
sides, my father was only a man. I thought the 
minister belonged to some different order of be- 
ings. Up there in the pulpit he seemed to me so 
far off — oh ! a great deal farther off than God 
did. His distance made my reverence for him 
take the form of idolatry. The pulpit was his 
pedestal. If any one had told me that the minis- 
ter ever did or thought anything that was wrong, 
I should have felt as if the foundations of the 
earth under me were shaken. I wondered if he 
ever did laugh. Perhaps it was wicked for a min- 
ister even to smile. 

One day, when I was very little, I met the 
minister in the street ; and he, probably recogniz- 
ing me as the child of one of his parishioners, 
actually bowed to me ! His bows were always 
ministerially profound, and I was so overwhelmed 
with surprise and awe that I forgot to make the 
proper response of a " curtsey," but ran home as 
fast as I could go, to proclaim the wonder. It 
would not have astonished me any more, if one 
of the tall Lombardy poplars that stood along the 
sidewalk had laid itself down at my feet. 



SCHOOLROOM AND MEETING-HOUSE. 55 

I do not remember anytlilng' that the preacher 
ever said, except some words which I thought 
sounded well, — such as " dispensations," " de- 
crees," "ordinances," "covenants," — although I 
attached no meaning to them. He seemed to be 
trying to explain the Bible by putting it into long- 
words. I did not understand them at all. It was 
from Aunt Hannah that I received my first real 
glimpses of the beautiful New Testament revela- 
tion. In her unconscious wisdom she chose for 
me passages and chapters that were like open- 
ings into heaven. They contained the great, deep 
truths which are simple because they are great. 
It was not explanations of those grand words that 
I required, or that anybody requires. In reading 
them we are all children together, and need only 
to be led to the banks of the river of God, which 
is full of water, that we may look down into its 
pellucid depths for ourselves. 

Our minister was not unlike other ministers of 
the time, and his seeming distance from his con- 
gregation was doubtless owing to the deep rever- 
ence in which the ministerial office was universally 
held among our predecessors. My own graven- 
image worship of him was only a childish exag- 
geration of the general feeling of grown people 
around me. He seemed to us an inhabitant of a 
Sabbath-day sphere, while we belonged to the 
e very-day world. 

I distinctly remember the day of my christen- 



56 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

ing, when I was between three and four years old. 
My parents did not make a public profession of 
their faith until after the birth of all their chil- 
dren, eight of whom — I being- my fathei-'s ninth 
child and seventh daughter — were baptized at 
one time. My two half-sisters were then grown- 
up young women. My mother had told us that 
the minister would be speaking directly to us, and 
that we must pay close attention to what he said. 
I felt that it was an important event, and I wished 
to do exactly what the minister desired of me. I 
listened eagerly while he read the chapter and the 
hymn. The latter was one of my favorites : — 

" See Israel's gentle Shepherd stands; " 

and the chapter was the third of St. Matthew, 
containing the story of our Lord's baptism. I 
could not make out any special message for us, 
'until he came to the words, " Whose fan is in his 
hand." 

That must be it ! I looked anxiously at my 
sisters, to see if they had brought their fans. It 
was warm weather, and I had taken a little one 
of my own to meeting. Believing that I was fol- 
lowing a direct instruction, I clasped my fan to 
my bosom and held it there as we walked up the 
aisle, and during the ceremony, wondering why 
the others did not do so, too. The baby in my 
mother's arms — Octavia, the eighth daughter — 
shocked me by crying a little, but I tried to be- 
have the better on that account. 



SCHOOLROOM AND MEETING-HOUSE. 57 

It all seemed very solemn and mysterious to me. 
I knew from my father's and mother's absorbed 
manner then, and when we returned from church, 
that it was something exceedingly important to 
tbem — something that they wished us neither to 
talk about nor to forget. 

I never did forget it. There remained with me 
a sweet, haunting feeling of having come near the 
" gentle Shepherd " of the hymn, who was calling 
the lambs to his side. The chapter had ended 
with the echo of a voice from heaven, and with the 
glimpse of a descending Dove. And the water- 
drops on my forehead, were they not from that 
" pure river of water of life, clear as crystal," 
that made music through those lovely verses in 
the last chapter of the good Book ? 

I am glad tbat I have always remembered that 
day of family consecration. As I look back, it 
seems as if the horizons of heaven and earth 
met and were blended then. And who can tell 
whether the fragrance of that day's atmosphere 
may not enter into the freshness of some new 
childhood in the life which is to come ? 



III. 

THE HYMN-BOOK. 

Almost the first decided taste in my life was 
the love of hymns. Committing them to memory 
was as natural to me as breathing. I followed my 
mother about with the hymn-book (" Watts' and 
Select"), reading or repeating them to her, while 
she was busy with her baking or ironing, and she 
was always a willing listener. She was fond of 
devotional reading, but had little time for it, and 
it pleased her to know that so small a child as I 
really cared for the hymns she loved. 

I learned most of them at meeting. I was told 
to listen to the minister ; but as I did not un- 
derstand a word he was saying, I gave it up, and 
took refuge in the hymn-book, with the conscien- 
tious purpose of trying to sit still. I turned the 
leaves over as noiselessly as possible, to avoid the 
dreaded reproof of my mother's keen blue eyes ; 
and sometimes I learned two or three hymns in a 
forenoon or an afternoon. Finding it so easy, I 
thought I would begin at the beginning, and learn 
the whole. There were about a thousand of them 
included in the Psalms, the First, Second, and 



THE HYMN-BOOK. 59 

Third Books, and the Select Hymns. But I had 
learned to read before I had any knowledge of 
counting up numbers, and so was blissfully igno- 
rant of the magnitude of my undertaking. I did 
not, I think, change my resolution because there 
were so many, but because, little as I was, I dis- 
covered that there were hymns and hymns. Some 
of them were so prosy that the words would not 
stay in my memory at all, so I concluded that I 
would learn only those I liked. 

I had various reasons for my preferences. 
With some, 1 was caught by a melodious echo, or 
a sonorous ring ; with others by the hint of a pic- 
ture, or a story, or by some sacred suggestion that 
attracted me, I knew not why. Of some I was 
fond just because I misunderstood them ; and of 
these I made a free version in my mind, as I mur- 
mured them over. One of my first favorites was 
certainly rather a singular choice for a child of 
three or four years. I had no idea of its mean- 
ing, but made up a little story out of it, with my- 
self as the heroine. It began with the words — 

" Come, humble sinner, in whose breast 
A thousand thoughts revolve." 

The second stanza read thus : — 

"I '11 go to Jesus, though my sin 
Hath like a mountain rose." 

I did not know that this last line was bad gram- 
mar, but thought that the sin in question was 



60 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

something pretty, that looked "like a mountain- 
rose." Mountains I had never seen ; they were 
a glorious dream to me. And a rose that grew 
on a mountain must surely be prettier than any of 
our red wild roses on the hill, sweet as they were. 
I would pluck that rose, and carry it up the moun- 
tain-side into the temple where the King sat, and 
would give it to Him ; and then He would touch 
me with his sceptre, and let me through into a 
garden full of flowers. There was no garden in 
the hymn ; I suppose the " rose " made me invent 
one. But it did read — 

" I know his courts ; I '11 enter in, 
Whatever may oppose ; " 

and so I fancied there would be lions in the way, 
as there were in the Pilgrim's, at the " House 
Beautiful " ; but I should not be afraid of them ; 
they would no doubt be chained. The last verse 
began with the lines, — 

" I can but perish if I go : 
I am resolved to try : " 

and my heart beat a brave echo to the words, as 
I started off in fancy on a " Pilgrim's Progress " 
of my own, a happy little dreamer, telling nobody 
the secret of my imaginary journey, taken in ser- 
mon-time. 

Usually, the hymns for which I cared most sug- 
gested Nature in some way, — flowers, trees, skies, 
and stars. When I repeated, — 

" There everlasting spring abides, 
And never-withering flowers," — 



THE HYMN-BOOK. 61 

I thought of the faintly flushed anemones and 
white and blue violets, the dear little short-lived 
children of our shivering spring. They also would 
surely be found in that heavenly land, blooming 
on through the cloudless, endless year. And I 
seemed to smell the spiciness of bayberry and 
sweet-fern and wild roses and meadow-sweet that 
grew in fragrant jungles up and down the hill- 
side back of the meeting-house, in another verse 
which I dearly loved : — 

" The hill of Zion yields 

A thousand saci-ed sweets, 
Before we reach the heavenly fields, 
Or walk the golden streets." 

We were allowed to take a little nosegay to 
meeting sometimes : a pink or two (pinks were 
pink then, not red, nor white, nor even double) 
and a sprig of camomile ; and their blended pei'- 
fume still seems to be a part of the June Sabbath 
mornings long passed away. 

When the choir sang of 

" Seas of heavenly rest," 

a breath of salt wind came in with the words 
through the open door, from the sheltered waters 
of the bay, so softly blue and so lovely, I always 
wondered how a world could be beautiful where 
" there was no more sea." I concluded that the 
hymn and the text could not really contradict 
each other ; that there must be something like 
the sea in heaven, after all. One stanza that I 



62 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 



I 



used to croon over, gave me the feeling of being 
rocked in a boat on a strange and beautiful ocean, 
from whose far-off shores the sunrise beckoned : — 

" At anchor laid, remote from home, 
Toiling I cry, Sweet Spirit, come ! 
Celestial breeze, no longer stay ! 
But spread my sails, and speed my way ! " 

Some of the chosen hymns of my infancy the 
world recognizes among its noblest treasures of 
sacred song. That one of Doddi-idge's, beginning 
with 

" Ye golden lamps of heaven, farewell! " 

made me feel as if I had just been gazing in at 
some window of the " many mansions " above : — 

" Ye stars are but the shining dust 
Of my divine abode." 

Had I not known that, ever since I was a baby ? 
But the light does not stream down even into 
a baby's soul with equal brightness all the time. 
Earth draws her dark curtains too soon over the 
windows of heaven, and the little children fall 
asleep in her dim rooms, and forget their visions. 
That majestic hymn of Cowper's, — 

" God moves in a mysterious way," — 

was one of my first and dearest. It reminded me 
of the rolling of thunder through the sky ; and, 
understood as little as the thunder itself, which 
my mother told me was God's voice, so that I 



THE HYMN-BOOK. 63 

bent my ear and listened, expecting to hear it 
shaped into words, it still did give me an idea of 
the presence of One Infinite Being, that thrilled 
me with reverent awe. And this was one of the 
best lessons taught in the Puritan school, — the 
lesson of reverence, the certainty that life meant 
looking up to something, to Some One greater 
than ourselves, to a Life far above us, which yet 
enfolded ours. 

The thought of God, when He was first spoken 
of to me, seemed as natural as the thought of my 
father and mother. That He should be invisible 
did not seem strange, for I could not with my 
eyes see through the sky, beyond which I sup- 
posed He lived. But it was easy to believe that 
He could look down and see me, and that He 
knew all about me. We were taught very early 
to say " Thou, God, seest me " ; and it was one 
of my favorite texts. Pleaven seemed nearer, be- 
cause somebody I loved was up there looking at 
me. A baby is not afraid of its father's eyes. 

The first real unhappiness I remember to have 
felt was when some one told me, one day, that 
I did not love God. I insisted, almost tearfidly, 
that I did ; but I was told that if I did truly love 
Him I should always be good. I knew I was not 
that, and the feeling of sudden orphanage came 
over me like a bewildering cloud. Yet I was sure 
that I loved my father and mother, even when 
I was naughty Was He harder to please than 
they ? 



64 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

Then I heard of a dreadful dark Somewhere, 
the horror of which was that it was away from 
Him. What if I should wake some mornino-, 
and find myself there ? Sometimes I did not dare 
to go to sleep for that dread. And the thought 
was too awful to speak of to anybody. Baby 
that I was, I shut my lips in a sort of reckless 
despair, and thought that if I could not be good, 
I might as well be naughty, and enjoy it. But 
somehow I could not enjoy it. I felt sorry and 
ashamed and degraded whenever I knew that I 
had been cross or selfish. 

I heard them talk about Jesus as if He were a 
dead man, one who died a great while ago, whose 
death made a great difference to us, I could not 
understand how. It seemed like a lovely story, 
the loveliest in the world, but it sounded as if it 
were only a story, even to those who repeated it 
to me ; something that had happened far away in 
the past. 

But one day a strange minister came into the 
Sabbath-school in our little chapel, and spoke to 
us children about Him, oh ! so differently ! 

" Children," he said, " Jesus is not dead. He 
is alive : He loves you, and wants you to love 
Him ! He is your best Friend, and He will show 
you how to be good." 

My heart beat fast. I could hardly keep back 
the tears. The New Testament, then, did really 
mean what it said! Jesus said He would come 



THE HYMN-BOOK. 65 

back again, and would always be with those who 
loved Him. 

" He is alive ! He loves me ! He will tell me 
how to be good ! " I said it over to myself, but 
not to anybody else. I was sure that I loved 
Him. It was like a beautiful secret between us 
two. I felt Him so alive and so near! He 
wanted me to be good, and I could be, I would 
be, for his sake. 

That stranger never knew how his loving word 
had touched a child's heart. The doors of the 
Father's house were opened wide again, by the 
only hand that holds the key. The world was all 
bright and fresh once more. It was as if the 
May sun had suddenly wakened the flowers in an 
overshadowed wayside nook. 

I tried long afterward, thinking that it was my 
duty, to build up a wall of difficult doctrines over 
my spring blossoms, as if they needed protection. 
But the sweet light was never wholly stifled out, 
though I did not always keep my face turned to- 
wards it ; and I know now, that just to let his life- 
giving smile shine into the soul is better than any 
of the theories we can invent about Him ; and 
that only so can young or old receive the kingdom 
of God as a little child. 

I believe that one great reason for a child's 
love of hymns, such as mine was, is that they 
are either addressed to a Person, to the Divine 
Person, — or they bring Him before the mind in 



66 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD, 

some distinct way, instead of being written upon 
a subject, like a sermon. To make Him real is the 
only way to make our own spirits real to ourselves. 

I think more gratefully now of the verses I 
learned from the Bible and the Hymn-Book than 
of almost anything that came to me in that time 
of beginnings. The whole Hymn-Book was not for 
me then, any more than the whole Bible. I took 
from both only what really belonged to me. To 
be among those who found in them true sources 
of faith and adoration, was like breathing in my 
native air, though I could not tell anything about 
the land from which I had come. Much that was 
put in the way of us children to climb by, we 
could only stumble over ; but around and above 
the roughnesses of the road, the pure atmosphere 
of worship was felt everywhere, the healthiest at- 
mosphere for a child's soul to breathe in. 

I had learned a great many hymns before the 
family took any notice of it. When it came to 
the knowledge of my most motherly sister Erailie, 
— I like to call her that, for she was as fond of 
eai'ly rising as Chaucer's heroine : — 

" Up rose the sun, and up rose Emilie ; " 

and it is her own name, with a very slight 
change, — she undertook to see how many my small 
memory would contain. She jjromised me a new 
book, when I should have learned fifty ; and that 
when I could repeat any one of a hundred hymns, 
she would teach me to write. I earned the book 



THE HYMN-BOOK. 67 

when I was about four years old. I think it was 
a collection of some of Jane Taylor's verses. " For 
Infant Minds," was part of the title. I did not 
care for it, however, nearly so much as I did for 
the old, thumb-worn " Watts' and Select Hymns." 
Before I was five I had gone beyond the stipu- 
lated hundred. 

A proud and happy child I was, when I was 
permitted to dip a goose quill into an inkstand, 
and make written letters, instead of printing 
them with a pencil on a slate. 

My sister prepared a neat little writing-book 
for me, and told me not to make a mark in it 
except when she was near to tell me what to do. 
In my self-sufficient impatience to get out of "pot- 
hooks and trammels" into real letters and words, 
I disobeyed her injunction, and disfigured the 
pages with numerous tell-tale blots. Then I hid. 
the book away under the garret eaves, and refused 
to bring it to light again. I was not allowed to 
resume my studies in penmanship for some months, 
in consequence. But when I did learn to write, 
Emilie was my teacher, and she made me take 
great pains with my p's and q's. 

It is always a mistake to cram a juvenile mind. 
A precocious child is certainly as far as possible 
from being an interesting one. Children ought to 
be children, and nothing else. But I am not sorry 
that I learned to read when so young, because 



68 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

there were years of my childhood that came after, 
when I had very little time for reading anything. 

To learn hymns was not only a pastime, but a 
pleasure which it would have been almost cruel 
to deprive me of. It did not seem to me as if I 
learned them, but as if they just gave themselves 
to me while I read them over ; as if they, and the 
unseen things they sang about, became a part of 
me. 

Some of the old hymns did seem to lend us 
wings, so full were they of aspiration and hope 
and courage. To a little child, reading them or 
hearing them sung was like being caught up in a 
strong man's arms, to gaze upon some wonderful 
landscape. These climbing and flying hymns, — 
how well I remember them, although they were 
among the first I learned ! They are of the kind 
that can never wear out. We all know them by 
their first lines, — 

" Awake, our souls ! away, our fears ! " 

" Up to the hills I lift mine eyes." 

" There is a land of pure delipfht." 

" Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings, 
Thy better portion trace ! " 

How the meeting-house rafters used to ring to 
that last hymn, sung to the tune of " Amster- 
dam ! " Sometimes it seemed as if the very roof 
was lifted off, — nay, the roof of the sky itself, — 
as if the music had burst an entrance for our souls 
into the heaven of heavens. 



Tilt: IIYMN-BOOK. 69 

I loved to learn the glad hymns, and there 
were scores of them. They come flocking back 
through the years, like birds that are full of the 
music of an immortal si3ring ! 

" Come, let us join our cheerful songs 
With angels round the throne." 

"Love divine, all love excelling-; 

Joy of heaven, to earth come down." 

' ' Joy to the world ! the Lord is come ! ' ' 

" Hark ! the song of jubilee, 

Loud as mighty thunders' roar, 
Or the fullness of the sea 

When it breaks upon the shore ! 

"Hallelujah! for the Lord 

God Omnipotent shall reign ! 
Hallelujah ! let the word 

Echo round the earth and main." 

Ah, that word " Hallelujah ! " It seemed to 
express all the joy of spring mornings and clear 
sunshine and bursting blossoms, blended with all 
that I guessed of the songs of angels, and with all 
that I had heard and believed, in my fledgling- 
soul, of the glorious One who was born in a 
manger and died on a cross, that He might reign 
in human hearts as a king. I wondered why 
the people did not sing " Hallelujah " more. It 
seemed like a word sent straight down to us out 
of heaven. 

I did not like to learn the sorrowful hymns, 
though I did it when they were given to me as a 
task, such as — 



70 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

" Hark, from the tombs," 



and 



' Lord, what a wretched land is this, 
That yields us uo supply." 



I suppose that these mournful strains had their 
place, but sometimes the transition was too sud- 
den, from the outside of the meeting-house to the 
inside ; from the sunshine and bobolinks and but- 
tercups of the merry May-day world, to the sad 
strains that chanted of " this barren land," this 
" vale of tears," this " wilderness " of distress and 
woe. It let us light-hearted children too quickly 
down from the higher key of mirth to which our 
careless thoughts were pitched. We knew that 
we were happy, and sorrow to us was unreal. But 
somehow we did often get the impression that it 
was our duty to ti-y to be sorrowful ; and that we 
could not be entirely good, without being rather 
miserable. 

And I am afraid that in my critical little mind 
I looked upon it as an affectation on the part of 
the older people to speak of life in this doleful 
way. I thought that they really knew better. It 
seemed to me that it must be delightful to grow 
up, and learn things, and do things, and be very 
good indeed, — better than children could possi- 
bly know how to be. I knew afterwards that my 
elders were sometimes, at least, sincere in their 
sadness; for with many of them life must have 
been a hard struggle. But when they shook their 



THE HYMN-BOOK. 71 

heads and said, — " Child, you will not be so happj'^ 
by and hy ; 3^011 are seeing your best days now," 
— I still doubted. 1 was born with the blessing 
of a cheerful temperament ; and while that is not 
enough to sustain any of us through the inevita- 
ble sorrows that all must share, it would have 
been most unnatural and ungrateful in me to 
think of earth as a dismal place, when everything 
without and within was trying to tell me that this 
good and beautiful world belongs to God. 

I took exception to some verses in many of the 
hymns that I loved the most. I had my own 
mental reservations with regard even to that glo- 
rious chant of the ages, — 

"Jerusalem, my happy home, 
Name ever dear to me." 

I always wanted to skip one half of the third 
stanza, as it stood in our Hymn-Book : — 

" Where congregations ne'er break up, 
And Sabbaths have no end." 

I did not want it to be Sabbath-day always. I 
was conscious of a pleasure in the thought of 
games and frolics and coming week-day delights 
that would flit across my mind even when I was 
studying my hymns, or trying to listen to the 
minister. And I did want the congregation to 
break up some time. Indeed, in those bright 
spring days, the last hymn in the afternoon always 
sounded best, because with it came the opening of 



72 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

doors into the outside air, and the pouring in of 
a mingled scent of sea winds and apple blossoms, 
like an invitation out into the freedom of the 
beach, the hillsides, the fields and gardens and 
orchards. In all this I felt as if I were very 
wicked. I was afraid that I loved earth better 
than I did heaven. 

Nevertheless I always did welcome that last 
hymn, announced to be sung " with tlie Doxology," 
usually in " long metre," to the tune of " Old 
Hundred." There were certain mysterious pre- 
liminaries, — the rustling of singing-book leaves, 
the sliding of the short screen-curtains before the 
singers along by their clinking rings, and now and 
then a premonitory groan or squeak from bass- 
viol or violin, as if the instruments were clearing 
their throats ; and finally the sudden uprising of 
that long row of heads in the " singing-seats." 

My tallest and prettiest grown-up sister, Louise, 
stood there among them, and of all those girlish, 
blooming faces I thought hers the very handsom- 
est. But she did not open her lips wide enough 
to satisfy me. I could not see that she was sing- 
ing at all. 

To stand up there and be one of the choir, 
seemed to me very little short of promotion to the 
ranks of cherubim and seraphim. I quite envied 
that tall, pretty sister of mine. I was sure that I 
should open my mouth wide, if I could only be in 
her place. Alas ! the yeai-s proved that, much as 



THE HYMN-BOOK. 73 

I loved the hymns, there was no music in me to 
give them voice, except to very indulgent ears. 

Some of us must wait for the best human gifts 
until we come to heavenly places. Our natural 
desire for musical utterance is perhaps a prophecy 
that in a perfect world we shall all know how to 
sing. But it is something to feel music, if we 
cannot make it. That, in itself, is a kind of un- 
conscious singing. 

As I think back to my childhood, it seems to 
me as if the air was full of hymns, as it was of 
the fragrance of clover-blossoms, and the songs of 
bluebirds and robins, and the deep undertone of 
the sea. And the purity, the calmness, and the 
coolness of the dear old Sabbath days seems lin- 
gering yet in the words of those familiar hymns, 
whenever I hear them sung. Their melody pene- 
trates deep into my life, assuring me that I have 
not left the green pastures and the still waters 
of my childhood very far behind me. 

There is something at the heart of a true song 
or hymn which keeps the heart young that listens. 
It is like a breeze from the eternal hills ; like the 
west wind of spring, never by a breath less balmy 
and clear for having poured life into the old gen- 
erations of earth for thousands of years ; a spir- 
itual freshness, which has nothing to do with time 
or decay. 



IV. 

NAUGHTY CHILDREN AND FAIRY TALES. 

Although the children of an earlier time 
heard a great deal of theological discussion which 
meant little or nothing to them, there was one 
thing that was made clear and emphatic in all 
the Puritan training: that the heavens and earth 
stood upon firm foundations — upon the Moral 
Law as taught in the Old Testament and con- 
firmed by the New. Whatever else we did not 
understand, we believed that to disobey our par- 
ents, to lie or steal, had been forbidden by a 
Voice which was not to be gainsaid. People who 
broke or evaded these commands did so willfully, 
and without excusing themselves, or being excused 
by others. I think most of us expected the fate 
of Ananias and Sapphira, if we told what we 
knew was a falsehood. 

There were reckless exceptions, however. A 
playmate, of whom I was quite fond, was once 
asked, in my presence, whether she had done 
something forbidden, which I knew she had been 
about only a little while before. She answered 
" No," and without any aj^parent hesitation. Af- 
ter the person who made the inquiry had gone, I 



NAUGHTY CHILDREN AND FAIRY TACiFS. 77 

exclaimed, with horrified wonder, " How could 
you? 

Her reply was, " Oh, I only hind of said no." 
What a real lie was to her, if she understood a 
distinct denial of the truth as only " kind-of " 
lying', it perplexed me to imagine. The years 
proved that this lack of moi-al perception was 
characteristic, and nearly spoiled a nature full of 
beautiful gifts. 

I could not deliberately lie, but I had my own 
temptations, which I did not always successfully 
resist. I remember the very spot — in a foot- 
path through a green field — where I first met 
the Eighth Commandment, and felt it looking me 
full in the face. 

I suppose I was five or six years old. I had 
begun to be trusted with errands ; one of them 
was to go to a farm-house for a quart of milk 
every morning, to purchase which I went always 
to the money-drawer in the shop and took out 
four cents. We were allowed to take a " small 
brown " biscuit, or a date, or a fig, or a " gibral- 
tar," sometimes; but we well understood that we 
could not help ourselves to money. 

Now there was a little painted sugar equestrian 
in a shop-widow down town, which I had seen and 
set my heart upon. I had learned that its price 
was two cents ; and one morning as I passed around 
the counter with my tin pail I made up my mind 
to possess myself of that amount. My father's 



A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

back was turned ; he was busy at his desk with 
account-books and ledgers. I counted out four 
cents aloud, but took six, and started on my er- 
rand with a fascinating picture before me of that 
pink and green horseback rider as my very own. 

I cannot imagine what I meant to do with him. 
I knew that his paint was poisonous, and I could 
not have intended to eat him ; there were much 
better candies in my father's window ; he would 
not sell these dangerous painted toys to children. 
But the little man was pretty to look at, and I 
wanted him, and meant to have him. It was 
just a child's first temptation to get possession of 
what was not her own, — the same ugly tempta- 
tion that produces the defaulter, the burglar, and 
the highway robber, and that made it necessary 
to declare to every human being the law, " Thou 
shalt not covet." 

As I left the shop, I was conscious of a certain 
pleasure in the success of my attempt, as any thief 
might be ; and I walked off very fast, clattering 
the coppers in the tin pail. 

When I was fairly through the bars that led 
into the farmer's field, and nobody was in sight, I 
took out my purloined pennies, and looked at them 
as they lay in my palm. 

Then a strange thing happened. It was a 
bright morning, but it seemed to me as if the sky 
grew suddenly dark ; and those two pennies be- 
gan to burn through my hand, to scorch me, as if 



NAUGHTY CHILDREN AND FAIRY TALES. 11 

they were red hot, to my very soul. It was agony 
to hold them. I laid them down under a tuft of 
grass in the footpath, and ran as if I had left a 
demon behind me. I did my errand, and return- 
ing, I looked about in the grass for the two cents, 
wondering whether they could make me feel so 
badly again. But my good angel hid them from 
me ; I never found them. 

I was too much of a coward to confess my 
fault to my father ; I had already begun to think 
of him as " an austere man," like him in the par- 
able of the talents. I should have been a much 
happier child if I had confessed, for I had to carry 
about with me for weeks and months a heavy 
burden of shame. I thought of myself as a thief, 
and used to dream of being carried off to jail and 
condemned to the gallows for my offense : one of 
my story-books told about a boy who was hanged 
at Tyburn for stealing, and how was I better than 
he? 

Whatever naughtiness I was guilty of after- 
wards, I never again wanted to take what be- 
longed to another, whether in the family or out 
of it. I hated the sight of the little sugar horse- 
back rider from that day, and was thankful enough 
when some other child had bought him and left 
his place in the window vacant. 

About this time I used to lie awake nights a 
good deal, wondering what became of infants who 
were wicked. I had heard it said that all who 



78 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

died in infancy went to heaven, but it was also 
said that those who sinned could not possibly go 
to heaven. I understood, from talks I had lis- 
tened to among older people, that infancy lasted 
until children were about twelve years of age. 
Yet hei-e was I, an infant of less than six yeai's, 
who had committed a sin. I did not know what 
to do with my own case. I doubted whether it 
would do any good for me to pray to be forgiven, 
but I did pray, because I could not help it, though 
not aloud. I believe I preferred thinking my 
my prayers to saying them, almost always. 

Inwardly, I objected to the idea of being an 
infant; it seemed to me like being nothing In 
particular — neither a child nor a little girl, nei- 
ther a baby nor a woman. Having discovered 
that I was capable of being wicked, I thought it 
would be better if I could grow up at once, and 
assume my own responsibilities. It quite demor- 
alized me when people talked in my presence 
about "innocent little children." 

There was much questioning in those days as to 
whether fictitious reading was good for children. 
To " tell a story " was one equivalent expression 
for lying. But those who came nearest to my 
child-life recognized the value of truth as im- 
pressed through the imagination, and left me in 
delightful freedom among my fairy-tale books. I 
think I saw a difference, from the first, between 
the old poetic legends and a modern lie, espe- 



NAUGHTY CHILDREN AND FAIRY TALES. 79 

cially if this latter was the invention of a fancy 
as youthful as my own. 

I supposed that the beings of those imaginative 
tales had lived some time, somewhere ; perhaps 
they still existed in foreign countries, which were 
all a realm of fancy to nie. I was certain that 
they could not inhabit our matter-of-fact neigh- 
borhood. I had never heard that any fairies or 
elves came over with the Pilgrims in the May- 
flower. But a little red-haired playmate with 
whom I became intimate used to take me off with 
her into the fields, where, sitting on the edge of 
a disused cartway fringed with pussy-clover, she 
poured into my ears the most remarkable narra- 
tives of acquaintances she had made with peo- 
ple who lived under the ground close by us, in 
my father's orchard. Her literal descriptions 
quite deceived me ; I swallowed her stories entire, 
just as people in the last century did Defoe's ac- 
count of " The Apparition of Mrs. Yeal." 

She said that these subterranean peojjle kept 
house, and that they invited her down to play with 
their children on Wednesday and Saturday after- 
noons ; also that they sometimes left a plate of 
cakes and tarts for her at their door : she offered 
to show me the very spot where it was, — under a 
great apple-tree which my brothers called " the 
luncheon-tree," because we used to rest and re- 
fresh ourselves there, when we helped my father 
weed his vegetable-garden. But she guarded her- 



80 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

self by informing me that it would be impossible 
for us to open the door ourselves ; that it could 
only be unfastened from the inside. She told me 
these people's names — a " Mr. Pelican," and a 
" Mr. Apple-tree Manasseh," who had a very 
large family of little " Manassehs." She said 
that there was a still larger family, some of them 
probably living just under the spot where we sat, 
whose sii'name was " Hokes." (If either of us 
had been familiar with another word pronounced 
in the same way, though spelled differently, I 
should since have thought that she was all the 
time laughing in her sleeve at my easy belief.) 
These " Hokeses " were not good-natured people, 
she added, whispering to me that we must not 
speak about them aloud, as they had sharp ears, 
and might overhear us, and do us mischief. 

I think she was hoaxing herself as well as me ; 
it was her way of being a heroine in her own eyes 
and mine, and she had always the manner of 
being entirely in earnest. 

But she became more and more romantic in 
her inventions. A distant aristocratic - looking 
mansion, which we could see half-hidden by trees, 
across the river, she assured me was a haunted 
house, and that she had passed many a night there, 
seeing unaccountable sights, and hearing mysteri- 
ous sounds. She further announced that she was 
to be married, some time, to a young man who 
lived over there. ] inferred that the marriage 



NAUGHTY CHILDREN AND FAIRY TALES. 81 

was to take place whenever the ghostly tenants 
of the house would give their consent. She re- 
vealed to me, under promise of strict secrecy, 
the young man's name. It was " Alonzo." 

Not long after I picked up a book which one of 
my sisters had borrowed, called " Alonzo and Me- 
lissa," and I discovered that she had been telling 
me page after page of " Melissa's " adventures, 
as if they were her own. The fading memory I 
have of the book is that it was a very silly one ; 
and when I discovered that the rest of the roman- 
tic occurrences she had related, not in that vol- 
ume, were to be found in " The Children of the 
Abbey," I left off listening to her. I do not 
think I regarded her stories as lies ; I only lost 
my interest in them after I knew that they were 
all of her own clumsy second-hand making-up, out 
of the most commonplace material. 

My two brothers liked to play upon my cre- 
dulity. When my brother Ben pointed up to the 
gilded weather-cock on the Old South steeple, and 
said to me with a very grave face, — 

" Did you know that whenever that cock crows 
every rooster in town crows too?" I listened out 
at the window, and asked, — 

" But when will he begin to crow ? " 

" Oh, roosters crow in the night, sometimes, 
when you are asleep." 

Then my younger brother would break in with 
a shout of delight at my stupidity : — 



82 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

" I '11 tell you when, goosie ! — 

* The next day after never ; 
When the dead ducks fly over the river.' " 

But this must have been when I was very small ; 
for I remember thinking that " the next day 
after never " would come some time, in millions of 
years, perhaps. And how queer it would be to 
see dead ducks flying through the air ! 

Witches were seldom spoken of in the pres- 
ence of us children. We sometimes overheard a 
snatch of a witch-story, told in whispers, by the 
flickering firelight, just as we were being sent off 
to bed. But, to the older people, those legends were 
too much like realities, and they preferred not 
to repeat them. Indeed, it was over our town 
that the last black shadow of the dreadful witch- 
craft delusion had rested. Mistress Hale's house 
was just across the burying-ground, and Gallows 
Hill was only two miles away, beyond the bridge. 
Yet I never really knew what the " Salem Witch- 
craft " was until Goodrich's " History of the 
United States " was put into my hands as a school- 
book, and I read about it there. 

Elves and gnomes and air-sprites and genii 
were no strangers to us, for my sister Emilie — 
she who heard me say my hymns, and taught me 
to write — was mistress of an almost limitless 
fund of imaginative lore. She was a very Sche- 
herezade of story-tellers, so her younger sisters 
thought, who listened to her while twilight grew 



NAUGHTY CHILDREN AND FAIRY TALES. 83 

into moonlight, evening after evening, with fasci- 
nated wakefulness. 

Besides the tales that the child-world of all 
ages is familiar with, — Red Riding - Hood, the 
Giant-Killer, Cinderella, Aladdin, the "Sleeping 
Beauty," and the rest, — she had picked up some- 
where most of the folk -stories of Ireland and 
Scotland, and also the wild legends of Germany, 
which latter were not then made into the compact 
volumes known among juvenile readers of to-day 
as Grimm's " Household Tales." 

Her choice was usually judicious ; she omitted 
the ghosts and goblins that would have havinted 
our dreams ; although I was now and then vis- 
ited by a nightmare - consciousness of being a 
bewitched princess who must perform some im- 
possible task, such as turning a whole roomful of 
straws into gold, one by one, or else lose my head. 
But she blended the humorous with the romantic 
in her selections, so that we usually dropped to 
sleep in good spirits, if not with a laugh. 

That old story of the fisherman who had done 
the " Man of the Sea " a favor, and was to be re- 
warded by having his wish granted, she told in so 
quaintly realistic a way that I thought it might all 
have happened on one of the islands out in Massa- 
chusetts Bay. The fisherman was foolish enough, 
it seemed, to let his wife do all his wishing for 
him ; and she, unsatisfied still, though she had 
been made first an immensely rich woman, and 



84 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

then a great queen, at last sent her husband to 
ask that they two might be made rulers over the 
sun, moon, and stars. 

As my sister went on with the story, I conld 
see the waves grow black, and could hear the 
wind mutter and growl, while the fisherman called 
for the first, second, and then reluctantly, for the 
third time : — 

' ' O Man of the Sea, 
Come listen to me ! 
For Alice my wife, 
The plague of my life. 
Has sent me to beg a boon of thee ! " 

As his call died away on the sullen wind, the 
mysterious " Man of the Sea " rose in his wrath 
out of the billows, and said, — 

" Go back to your old mud hut, and stay there 
with your wife Alice, and never come to trouble 
me again." 

I sympathized with the " Man of the Sea " in 
his righteous indignation at the conduct of the 
greedy, grasping woman ; and the moral of the 
story remained with me, as the story itself did. 
1 think I understood dimly, even then, that mean 
avarice and self-seeking ambition always find 
their true level in muddy earth, never among the 
stars. 

So it proved that my dear mother-sister was 
preparing me for life when she did not know it, 
when she thought she was only amusing me. 

This sister, though only just entering her teens, 



NAUGHTY CHILDREN AND FAIRY TALES. 85 

was toughening- herself by all sorts of unnecessary 
hardships for whatever might await her woman- 
hood. She used frequently to sleep in the garret 
on a hard wooden sea-chest instead of in a bed. 
And she would get up before daylight and run 
over into the burying -ground, barefooted and 
white-robed (we lived for two or three years in 
another house than our own, where the oldest 
graveyard in town was only separated from us 
by our garden fence), " to see if there were any 
ghosts there," she told us. Returning noiselessly, 
— herself a smiling phantom, with long, golden- 
brown hair rippling over her shoulders, — she 
would drop a trophy upon her little sisters' pil- 
low, in the shape of a big, yellow apple that had 
dropped from " the Colonel's " " pumpkin sweet- 
ing " tree into the graveyard, close to our fence. 

She was fond of giving me surprises, of watch- 
ing my wonder at seeing anything beautiful or 
strange for the first time. Once, when I was very 
little, she made me supremely happy by rousing me 
before four o'clock in the morning, dressing me 
hurriedly, and taking me out with her for a walk 
across the graveyard and through the dewy fields. 
The birds were singing, and the sun was just ris- 
ing, and we were walking toward the east, hand in 
hand, when suddenly there appeared before us 
what looked to me like an immense blue wall, 
stretching right and left as far as I could see. 

" Oh, what is it the wall of ? " I cried. 



86 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

It was a revelation she had meant for me. 
" So you did not know it was the sea, little girl ! 
she said. 

It was a wonderful illusion to my unaccustomed 
eyes, and I took in at that moment for the first 
time something of the real grandeur of the ocean. 
Not a sail was in sight, and the blue expanse was 
scarcely disturbed by a ripple, for it was the high- 
tide calm. That morning's freshness, that vision 
of the sea, I know I can never lose. 

From our garret window — and the garret was 
my usual retreat when I wanted to get away by 
myself with my books or my dreams — we had the 
distant horizon-line of the bay, across a quarter 
of a mile of trees and mowing fields. We could 
see the white breakers dashing against the long, 
narrow island just outside of the harbor, which I, 
with my childish misconstruction of names, called 
" Breakers' Island " ; supposing that the grown 
people had made a mistake when they spoke of it 
as " Baker's." But that far-off, shining band of 
silver and blue seemed so different from the whole 
great sea, stretching out as if into eternity from 
the feet of the baby on the shore ! 

The marvel was not lessened when I began to 
study geography, and comprehended that the world 
is round. Could it really be that we had that 
endless " Atlantic Ocean " to look at from our 
window, to dance along the edge of, to wade into 
or bathe in, if we chose ? The map of the world 



V 

NAUGHTY CHILDREN AND FAIRY TALES. 87 

became more interesting to me than any of the 
story-books. In my fanciful explorations I out- 
traveled Captain Cook, the only voyager around 
the world with whose name my childhood was fa- 
miliar. 

The field -paths were safe, and I was allowed 
to wander off alone through them. I greatly en- 
joyed the freedom of a solitary explorer among 
the sea-shells and wild flowers. 

There were wonders everywhere. One day I 
picked up a star-fish on the beach (we called it a 
"five-finger"), and hung him on a tree to dry, 
not thinking of him as a living creature. When 
I went some time after to take him down he had 
clasped with two or three of his fingers the bough 
where I laid him, so that he could not be removed 
without breaking his hardened shell. My con- 
science smote me when I saw what an unhappy- 
looking skeleton I had made of him. 

I overtook the horse-shoe crab on the sands, 
but I did not like to turn him over and make him 
" say his prayers," as some of the children did. 
I thought it must be wicked. And then he looked 
so uncomfortable, imploringly wriggling his claws 
while he lay upon his back ! I believe I did, how- 
ever, make a small collection of the shells of 
stranded horse-shoe crabs deserted by their ten- 
ants. 

There were also pretty canary-colored cockle- 
shells and tiny purple mussels washed up by the 



88 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

tide. I gathered them into my apron, and carried 
them home, and only learned that they too held 
living inhabitants by seeing a dead snail jjrotrud- 
ing from every shell after they had been left to 
themselves for a day or two. This made me care- 
ful to pick up only the empty ones, and there 
were plenty of them. One we called a " butter- 
boat " ; it had something shaped like a seat across 
the end of it on the inside. And the curious sea- 
urchin, that looked as if he was made only for or- 
nament, when he had once got rid of his spines, — 
and the transparent jelly-fish, that seemed to have 
no more right to be alive than a ladleful of mu- 
cilage, — and the razor-shells, and the barnacles, 
and the knotted kelp, and the flabby green sea- 
aprons, — there was no end to the interesting 
things I found when I was trusted to go down to 
the edge of the tide alone. 

The tide itself was the greatest marvel, slipping 
away so noiselessly, and creeping back so softly 
over the flats, whispering as it reached the sands, 
and laughing aloud " I am coming ! " as, dashing 
against the rocks, it drove me back to where the 
sea-lovage and purple beach-peas had dared to 
root themselves. I listened, and felt through all 
my little being that great, surging word of power, 
but had no guess of its meaning. I can think of 
it now as the eternal voice of Law, ever returning 
to the green, blossoming, beautiful verge of Gos- 
pel truth, to confirm its later revelation, and to say 



NAUGHTY CHILDREN AND FAIRY TALES. 89 

that Law and Gospel belong together. " The sea 
is His, and He made it : and His hands formed 
the dry land." 

And the dry land, the very dust of the earth, 
every day revealed to me some new miracle of a 
flower. Coming home from school one warm noon, 
I chanced to look down, and saw for the first time 
the dry roadside all starred with lavender-tinted 
flowers, scarcely larger than a pin - head ; fairy- 
flowers, indeed ; prettier than anything that grew 
in gardens. It was the red sand-wort ; but why 
a purple flower should be called red, I do not 
know. I remember holding these little amethys- 
tine blossoms like jewels in the palm of my hand, 
and wondering whether people who walked along 
that road knew what beautiful things they were 
treading upon. I never found the flower open 
except at noonday, when the sun was hottest. 
The rest of the time it was nothing but an in- 
significant, dusty-leaved weed, — a weed that was 
transformed into a flower only for an hour or two 
every day. It seemed like magic. 

The busy people at home could tell me very 
little about the wild flowers, and when I found a 
new one I thought I was its discoverer. I can 
see myself now leaning in ecstasy over a small, 
rough-leaved purple aster in a lonely spot on the 
hill, and thinking that nobody else in all the 
world had ever beheld such a flower before, be- 
cause I never had. I did not know then, that 



90 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

the flower-generations are older than the human 
race. 

The commonest blossoms were, after all, the 
dearest, because they were so familiar. Yevy few 
of us lived upon carpeted floors, biit soft green 
grass stretched away from our door-steps, all 
golden with dandelions in spring. Those dande- 
lion fields were like another heaven dropped down 
upon the earth, where our feet wandered at will 
among the stars. What need had we of luxuri- 
ous upholstery, when we could step out into such 
splendor, from the humblest door ? 

The dandelions could tell us secrets, too. We 
blew the fuzz off their gray heads, and made 
them answer our question, " Does my mother 
want me to come home ? " Or we sat down to- 
gether in the velvety gi"ass, and wove chains for 
our necks and wrists of the dandelion-stems, and 
" made believe " we were brides, or queens, or 
empresses. 

Then there was the white rock-saxifrage, that 
filled the crevices of the ledges with soft, tufty 
bloom like lingering snow-drifts, our May-flower, 
that brought us the first message of spring. There 
was an elusive sweetness in its almost impercep- 
tible breath, which one could only get by smelling 
it in close bunches. Its companion was the tiny 
four-cleft innocence-flower, that drifted pale sky- 
tints across the chilly fields. Both came to us in 
crowds, and looked out with us, as they do with 



NAUGHTY CHILDREN AND FAIRY TALES. 91 

the small girls and boys of to-day, from the windy 
crest of Powder House Hill, — the one playground 
of my childhood which is left to the children and 
the cows just as it was then. We loved these 
little democratic blossoms, that gathered around 
us in mobs at our May Day rejoicings. It is 
doubtful whether we should have loved the trail- 
ing arbutus any better, had it strayed, as it never 
did, into our woods. 

Violets and anemones played at hide-and-seek 
with us in shady places. The gay columbine 
rooted herself among the bleak rocks, and 
laughed and nodded in the face of the east wind, 
coquettishly wasting the show of her finery on 
the frowning air. "Bluebirds twittered over the 
dandelions in spring. In midsummer, goldfinches 
warbled among the thistle-tops ; and, high above 
the bird - congregations, the song -sparrow sent 
forth her clear, warm, penetrating trill, — sun- 
shine translated into music. 

We were not surfeited, in those days, with 
what is called pleasure ; but we grew up hapjDy 
and healthy, learning unconsciously the useful 
lesson of doing without. The birds and blos- 
soms hardly won a gladder or more wholesome life 
from the air of our homely New England than 
we did. 

" Out of the strong came forth sweetness.'" 
The Beatitudes are the natural flowering-forth 
of the Ten Commandments. And the happiness 



92 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

of our lives was rooted in the stern, vigorous vir- I 
tues of the people we lived among, drawing 
thence its bloom and song and fragrance. There j 
was granite in their character and beliefs, but it • 
was granite that could smile in the sunshine and i 
clothe itself with flowers. We little ones felt the 1 
firm rock beneath us, and were lifted up on it, to 
emulate their goodness, and to share their aspi- 
rations. 



i 



4 



V. 

OLD NEW ENGLAND. 

When I first opened my eyes upon my native 
town, it was already nearly two hundred years old, 
counting- from the time when it was part of the 
original Salem settlement, — old enough to have 
gained a character and an individuality of its own, 
as it certainly had. We children felt at once that 
we belonged to the town, as we did to our father 
or our mother. 

The sea was its nearest neighbor, and pene- 
trated to every fireside, claiming close intimacy 
with every home and heart. The farmers up and 
down the shore were as much fishermen as farm- 
ers ; they were as familiar with the Grand Banks 
of Newfoundland as they were with their own r"' 
potato-fields. Every third man you met in the j 
street, you might safely hail as " Shipmate," or ^ 
" Skipper," or " Captain." My father's early sea- 
faring experience gave him the latter title to the 
end of his life. 

It was hard to keep the boys from going off 
to sea before they were grown. No inland oc- 
cupation attracted them. " Land - lubber " was 
one of the most contemptuous epithets heard from 

.^ It — »iiS 



94 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

boyish lips. The spirit of adventure developed 
in them a rough, breezy type of manliness, now 
almost extinct. 

Men talked about a voyage to Calcutta, or 
Hong-Kong, or " up the Straits," — meaning Gi- 
braltar and the Mediterranean, — as if it were not 
much more than going to the next village. It 
seemed as if our nearest neighbors lived over 
there across the water ; we breathed the air of 
foreign countries, curiously interblended with our 
own. 

The women of well-to-do families had Canton 
crape shawls and Smyrna silks and Turk satins, 
for Sabbath - day wear, which somebody had 
brought home for them. Mantel - pieces were 
adorned with nautilus and conch-shells, and with 
branches and fans of coral ; and children had 
foreign curiosities and treasures of the sea for 
playthings. There was one imported shell that 
we did not value much, it was so abundant — the 
freckled univalve they called a " prop." Yet it 
had a mysterious interest for us little ones. We 
held it to our eai's, and listened for the sound 
of the waves, which we were told that it still 
kept, and always would keep. I remember the 
time when I thought that the ocean was really 
imprisoned somewhere within that narrow aper- 
ture. 

We were accustomed to seeing barrels full of 
cocoa-nuts rolled about ; and there were jars of 



OLD NEW ENGLAND. 95 

preserved tropical fruits, tamarinds, gingei"-root, 
and other spicy appetizers, almost as common as 
barberries and cranberries, in the cupboards of 
most housekeepers. 

I wonder what has become of those many, 
many little red " guinea-peas " we had to play 
with ! It never seemed as if they really belonged 
to the vegetable world, notwithstanding their 
name. 

We had foreign coins mixed in with our 
large copper cents, — all kinds, from the Russian 
" kopeck " to the " half-penny token " of Great 
Britain. Those were the days when we had half 
cents in circulation to make change with. For 
part of our currency was the old-fashioned "nine- 
pence," — twelve and a half cents, and the " four 
pence ha'penny," — six cents and a quarter. 
There was a good deal of Old England about us 
still. 

And we had also many living reminders of 
strange lands across the sea. Green parrots went 
scolding and laughing down the thimbleberry 
hedges that bordered the cornfields, as much at 
home out of doors as within. Java sparrows and 
canaries and other tropical song-birds poured their 
music out of sunny windows into the street, de- 
lighting the ears of passing school children long 
before the robins came. Now and then some- 
body's pet monkey would escape along the stone 
walls and shed-roofs, and try to hide from his 



96 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

boy-persecutors by dodging behind a chimney, or 
by slipping through an open scuttle, to the terror 
and delight of juveniles whose premises he in- 
vaded. 

And there were wanderers from foreign coun- 
tries domesticated in many families, whose swarthy 
complexions and un-Caucasian features became 
familiar in our streets, — Mongolians, Africans, 
and waifs from the Pacific islands, who always 
were known to us by distinguished names, — 
Hector and Scipio, and Julius Caesar and Chris- 
topher Columbus. Families of black people were 
scattered about the place, relics of a time when 
even New England had not freed her slaves. 
Some of them had belonged in my great-grand- 
father's family, and they hung about the old 
homestead at " The Farms" long after they were 
at liberty to go anywhere they pleased. There li 
was a " Rose " and a " Phillis " among them, who 
came often to our house to bring luscious high 
blackberries fi'om the Farms woods, or to do the 
household washing. They seemed pathetically 
out of place, although they lived among us on 
equal terms, respectable and respected. 

The pathos of the sea haunted the town, made i 
audible to every ear when a coming northeaster { 
brought the rote of the waves in from the islands J 
across the harbor-bar, with a moaning like that 
we heard when we listened for it in the shell. 
Almost every house had its sea-tragedy. Some- 



OLD NEW ENGLAND. 97 

body belonging to it had been shipwrecked, or 
had sailed away one day, and never returned. 

Our own part of the bay was so sheltered by 
its islands that there were seldom any disasters 
heard o£ near home, although the names of the 
two nearest — Great and Little Misery — are 
said to have originated with a shipwreck so far 
back in the history of the region that it was never 
recoi'ded. 

But one such calamity happened in my infancy, 
spoken of always by those who knew its victims 
in subdued tones ; — the wreck of the " Persia." 
The vessel was returning from the Mediterra- 
nean, and in a blinding snow-storm on a wild 
March niglit her captain probably mistook one of 
the Cape Ann light-houses for that on Baker's 
Island, and steered straight upon the rocks in a 
lonely cove just outside the cape. In the morn- 
ing the bodies of her dead crew were found toss- 
ing about with her cargo of paper-manufacturers' 
rags, among the breakers. Her captain and mate 
were Beverly men, and their funeral from the 
meeting-house the next Sabbath was an event 
which long left its solemnity hanging over the 
town. 

We were rather a young nation at this time. 
The History of the United States could only tell 
the story of the American Revolution, of the War 
of 1812, and of the administration of about half 
a dozen presidents. 



98 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

Our republicanism was fresh and wide-awake. 
The edge of George Washington's little hatchet 
had not yet been worn down to its latter-day dull- 
ness ; it flashed keenly on our young eyes and ears 
in the reading books, and thi-ough Fourth of July 
speeches. The Father of his Country had been 
dead only a little more than a quai-ter of a century, 
and General Lafayette was still alive ; he had, 
indeed, passed through our town but a few years 
before, and had been publicly welcomed under our 
own elms and lindens. Even babies echoed the 
names of our two heroes in their prattle. 

We had great " training-days," when drum and 
fife took our ears by storm ; when the militia 
and the Light Infantry mustered and marched 
through the streets to the Common, with boys 
and girls at their heels, — such girls as could get 
their mother's consent, or the courage to run oflf 
without it. (We never could.) But we always 
managed to get a good look at the show in one ■ , 
way or another. 1 1 

" Old Election," " 'Lection Day " we called it, 
a lost holiday now, was a general training day, 
and it came at our most delightful season, the 
last of May. Lilacs and tulips were in bloom, j | 
then ; and it was a picturesque fashion of the time 
for little girls whose parents had no flower-gar- 
dens to go around begging a bunch of lilacs, or j 
a tulip or two. My mother always made " 'Lection 
cake " for us on that day. It was nothing but a 



<4(r 



OLD NEW ENGLAND. 99 

kind of sweetened bread with a shine of eofg'-and- 
molasses on top ; but we thought it delicious. 

The Foui'th of July and Thanksgiving Day 
were the only other holidays that we made much 
account of, and the former was a far more well- 
behaved festival than it is in modern times. The 
bells rang without stint, and at morning and 
noon cannon were fired off. But torpedoes and 
fire-crackers did not make the highways danger- 
ous ; — perhaps they were thought too expensive 
an amusement. Somebody delivered an oration ; 
there was a good deal said about " this universal 
Yankee nation " ; some rockets went up from 
Salem in the evening ; we watched them from the 
hill, and then went to bed, feeling that we had 
been good patriots. 

There was always a Fast Day, which I am 
afraid most of us younger ones regarded merely 
as a day when we were to eat unlimited quantities 
of molasses-gingerbread, instead of sitting down 
to our regular meals. 

When I read about Christmas in the English 
story-books, I wished we could have that beauti- 
ful holiday. But our Puritan fathers shook their 
heads at Christmas. 

Our Sabbath-school library books were nearly 
all English reprints, and many of the story-books 
were very interesting. I think that most of my 
favorites were by Mrs. Sherwood. Some of them 
wei'e about life in India, — " Little Henry and 



100 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

his Bearei%" and " Ayah and Lady." Then there 
were "The Hedge of Thorns ; " " Theophilus and 
Sophia ; " " Anna Ross," and a whole series, of 
little English books that I took great delight in. 

I had begun to be rather introsjjective and some- 
what unhealthily self-critical, contrasting myself 
meanwhile with my sister Lida, just a little older, 
who was my usual playmate, and whom I admired 
very much for what I could not help seeing, — 
her unusual sweetness of disposition. I read Mrs. 
Sherwood's "Infant's Progress," and 1 made a 
personal application of it, picturing myself as the 
naughty, willful " Playful," and my sister Lida 
as the saintly little " Peace." 

This book gave me a morbid, unhappy feeling, 
while yet it had something of the fascination off 
the " Pilgrim's Progress," of which it is an imita-l 
tion. I fancied myself followed about by a fiend-| 
like boy who haunted its pages, called " Inbred- 
Sin ; " and the story implied that there was no such 
thing as getting rid of him. I began to dislikel 
all boys on his account. There was one who tor-j 
mented my sister and me — we only knew him' 
by name — by jumping out at us from behind 
doorways or fences on our way to school, mak-^ | 
ing horrid faces at us. " Inbred-Sin," I was cer- " 
tain, looked just like him ; and the two, strangely 
blended in one hideous presence, were the worst 
nightmare of my dreams. There was too much 
reality about that " Inbred-Sin." I felt that I 






OLD NEW ENGLAND. 101 

was acquainted with him. He was tlie hateful 
hero of the little allegory, as Satan is of " Para- 
dise Lost." 

I liked lessons that came to me through fables 
and fairy tales, although, in reading ^sop, I in- 
variably skipped the " moral " pinned on at the 
end, and made one for myself, or else did without. 

Mrs. Lydia Maria Child's story of " The Im- 
mortal Fountain," in the " Girl's Own Book," — 
which it was the joy of my heart to read, although 
it preached a searching sermon to me, — I applied 
in the same way that I did the " Infant's Prog- 
ress." I thought of Lida as the gentle, unselfish 
Eose, and myself as the ugly Marion. She was 
patient and obliging, and I felt that I was the re- 
verse. She was considered pretty, and I knew that 
I was the reverse of that, too. I wondered if Lida 
really had bathed in the Immortal Fountain, and 
oh, how I wished / could find the way there ! 
But I feared that trying to do so would be of no 
use ; the fairies would cross their wands to keep 
me back, and their wings would darken at my ap- 
proach. 

The book that I loved first and best, and lived 
upon in my childhood, was " Pilgrim's Progress." 
It was as a story that I cared for it, although I 
knew that it meant something more, — something 
that was already going on in my own heart and 
life. Oh, how I used to wish that I too could 
start off on a pilgrimage ! It would be so much 



102 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

easier tlian the continual, discouraging struggle to 
be good ! 

The lot I most envied was that of the contented 
Shepherd Boy in the Valley of Humiliation, sing- 
ing his cheerful songs, and wearing "the herb called 
Heart's Ease in his bosom " ; but all the glorious 
ups and downs of the " Progress " I would gladly 
have shared with Christiana and her children, 
never desiring to turn aside into any "By-Path 
Meadow" while Mr. Great-Heart led the wa)'-, 
and the Shining Ones came down to meet us along 
the road. It was one of the necessities of my 
nature, as a child, to have some one being, real or 
ideal, man or woman, before whom I inwardly 
bowed down and worshiped. Mr. Great-Heart 
was the perfect hero of my imagination. Nobody, 
in books or out of them, compared with him. I 
wondered if there were really any Mr. Great- 
Hearts to be met with among living men. 

I remember reading this beloved book once in a 
snow-storm, and looking up from it out among the i I 
white, wandering flakes, with a feeling that they 
had come down from heaven as its interpreters; 
that they were trying to tell me, in their airy up- 
and-down-flight, the story of innumerable souls. 
I tried to fix my eye on one particular flake, 
and to follow its course until it touched the earth. 
But I found that I could not. A little breeze 
was stii'ring, and the flake seemed to go and return, 
to descend and then ascend again, as if hastening 



OLD NEW ENGLAND. 103 

homeward to the sky, losing itself at last in the 
airy, infinite throng, and leaving me filled with 
thoughts of that " great multitude, which no man 
could number, clothed with white robes," crowding 
so gloriously into the closing pages of the Bible. 

Oh, if I could only be sure that I should some 
time be one of that invisible company ! But the 
heavens were already beginning to look a great 
way off. I hummed over one of my best loved 
hymns, — 

" Who are these in bright array ? " 

and that seemed to bring them nearer again. 

The history of the early martyrs, the persecu- 
tions of the Waldenses and of the Scotch Cov- 
enanters, I read and re-read with longing emula- 
tion ! Why could not I be a martyr, too ? It 
would be so beautiful to die for the truth as they 
did, as Jesus did ! I did not understand then 
that He lived and died to show us what life really 
means, and to give us true life, like His, — the 
life of love to God with all our hearts, of love to 
all His human children for His sake ; — and that 
to live this life faithfully is greater even than to 
die a martyr's death. 

It puzzled me to know what some of the talk 
I heard about being a Christian could mean. I 
saw that it was something which only men and 
women could comprehend. And yet they taught 
me to say those dear words of the Master, " Suffer 
the little children to come unto Me ! " Surely 



104 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

He meant what He said. He did not tell the chil- 
dren that they must receive the kingdom of God 
like grown people ; He said that everybody must 
enter into it "as a little child." 

But our fathers were stalwart men, with many 
foes to encounter. If anybody ever needed a 
grown-up religion, they surely did ; and it became 
them well. 

Most of our every-day reading also came to us 
over the sea. Miss Edgeworth's juvenile stories 
were in general circulation, and we knew " Harry 
and Lucy" and "Rosamond" almost as well as 
we did our own playmates. But we did not think 
those English children had so good a time as we 
did ; they had to be so prim and methodical. It 
seemed to us that the little, folks across the water 
never were allowed to ron^ and run wild ; some 
of us may have held a vague idea that this free- 
dom of ours was the neural inheritance of re- 
publican children only. 

Primroses and cowslips and daisies bloomed in 
these pleasant story-books of ours, and we went 
a-Maying there, with our transatlantic playmates. 
I think we sometimes started off with our baskets, 
expecting to find those English flowei's in our own 
fields. How should children be wiser than to look 
for every beautiful thing they have heard of, on 
home ground ? 

And, indeed, our commonest field-flowers were, 
many of them, importations from the mother- 



OLD NEW ENGLAND. 105 

country — clover, and dandelions, and ox-eye dai- 
sies. I was delighted when my mother told me 
one day that a yellow flower I brought her was 
a cowslip, for I thought she meant that it was the 
genuine English cowslip, which I had read about. 
1 was disappointed to learn that it was a native 
blossom, the marsh-marigold. 

My sisters had some books that I appropriated 
to myself a great deal : " Paul and Virginia ; " 
" Elizabeth, or the Exiles of Siberia ; " " Nina : 
an Icelandic Tale ; " with the " Vicar of Wake- 
field ; " the " Tour to the Hebrides ; " " Gulliver's 
Travels ; " the " Arabian Nights ; " and some odd 
volumes of Sir Walter Scott's novels. 

I read the " Scottish Chiefs " — my first novel 
— when I was about five years old. So absorbed 
was I in the sorrows of Lady Helen Mar and Sir 
William Wallace, that I crept into a corner where 
nobody would notice me, and read on through sun- 
set into moonlight, with eyes blurred with tears. 
I did not feel that I was doing anything wrong, 
for I had heard ray father say he was willing his 
daughters should read that one novel. He prob- 
ably did not intend the remark for the ears of 
his youngest, however. 

My appetite for reading was omnivorous, and 
I devoured a great many romances. My sisters 
took them from a circulating library, many more, 
perhaps, than came to my parents' knowledge ; 
b^t it was not often that one escaped me, wher- 



106 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

ever it was hidden. I did not understand what I 
was reading, to be sure ; and that was one of the 
best and worst things about it. The sentimen- 
talism of some of those romances was altogether 
unchildlike ; but I did not take much of it in. It 
was the habit of running over pages and pages to 
get to the end of a story, the habit of reading 
without earing what I read, that I know to have 
been bad for my mind. To use a nautical expres- 
sion, my brain was in danger of getting " water- 
logged." There are so many move books of fic- 
tion written nowadays, I do not see how the 
young people who try to read one tenth of them 
have any brains left for every-day use. 

One result of my infantile novel-reading was 
that I did not like to look at my own face in a 
mirror, because it was so unlike that of heroines, 
always j^ictured with " high white foreheads " and 
*' cheeks of a perfect oval." Mine was round, 
ruddy, and laughing with health ; and, though I 
practiced at the glass a good deal, I could not 
lengthen it by puckering down my lips. I quite 
envied the little girls who were pale and pensive- 
looking, as that was the only ladyfied standard 
in the romances. Of course, the chief pleasure of 
reading them was that of identifying myself with 
every new heroine. They began to call me a 
" bookworm " at home. I did not at all relish 
the title. 

It was fortunate for me that I liked to be out 



J 



OLD NEW ENGLAND. 107 

o£ doors a great deal, and that I had a brother, 
John, who was willing to have me for an occasional 
companion. Sometimes he would take me with 
him when he went huckleberrying, up the rural 
Montserrat Road, through Cat Swamp, to the edge 
of Burnt Hills and Beaver Pond. He had a boy's 
pride in explaining these localities to me, making 
me understand that I had a guide who was fami- 
liar with every inch of the way. Then, charging 
me not to move until he came back, he would 
leave me sitting alone on a great craggy rock, 
while he went off and filled his basket out of 
sight among the bushes. Indeed, I did not want 
to move, it was all so new and fascinating. The 
tall pine-trees whispering to each other across the 
sky -openings above me, the graceful ferns, the 
velvet mosses dotted with scarlet fairy-cups, as 
if the elves had just spread their table for tea, 
the unspeakable charm of the spice-breathing air, 
all wove a web of enchantment about me, from 
which I had no wish to disentangle myself. The 
silent spell of the woods held me with a power 
stronger even than that of the solemn-voiced sea. 
Sometimes this same brother would get per- 
mission to take me on a longer excursion, — to 
visit the old homestead at " The Farms." Three 
or four miles was not thought too long a walk 
for a healthy child of five years ; and that road, 
in the old time, led through a rural Paradise, 
beautifid at every season, — whether it were the 



108 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

time of song - spaiTows and violets, of wild roses, 
of coral-hung barberry-bushes, or of fallen leaves 
and snow-drifts. The wildness of the road, now 
exchanged for elegant modern cultivation, was 
its great charm to us. We stopped at the Cove 
Brook to hear the cat -birds sing, and at Min- 
go's Beach to revel in the sudden surprise of 
the open sea, and to listen to the chant of the 
waves, always stronger and gi-ander there than 
anywhere along the shore. We passed under 
dark wooded cliffs out into sunny openings, the 
last of which held under its skirting pines the 
secret of the prettiest woodpath to us in all the 
world, the path to the ancestral farm-house. 

We found children enough to play with there, 
— as numerous a family as our own. We were 
sometimes, I fancy, the added drop too much of 
already overflowing juvenility. Farther down the 
road, where the cousins were all grown-up men 
and women, Aunt Betsey's cordial, old-fashioned 
hopitality sometimes detained us a day or two. 
We watched the milking, and fed the chickens, 
and fared gloriously. Aunt Betsey could not have 
done more to entertain us, had we been the Presi- 
dent's children. 

I have always cherished the memory of a cer- 
tain pair of large-bowed spectacles that she wore, 
and of the green calash, held by a ribbon bridle, 
that sheltered her head, when she walked up from 
the shore to see us, as she often did. They an- 



OLD NEW ENGLAND. 109 

nounced to us the approach of inexhaustible kind- 
liness and good cheer. We took in a home-feeling 
with the words " Aunt Betsey " then and always. 
She had just the husband that belonged to her 
in my Uncle David, an upright man, frank-faced, 
large-hearted, and spiritually minded. He was 
my father's favorite brother, and to our branch 
of the family " The Farms " meant " Uncle David 
and Aunt Betsey." 

My brother John's plans for my entertainment 
did not always harmonize entirely with my own 
ideas. He had an inventive mind, and wanted 
me to share his boyish sports. But I did not 
like to ride in a wheelbarrow, nor to walk on 
stilts, nor even to coast down the hill on his sled ; 
and I always got a tumble, if I tried, for I was 
rather a clumsy child ; besides, I much preferred 
girls' quieter games. 

We were seldom permitted to play with any 
boys except our brothers. I drew the inference 
that our boys must be a great deal better than 
" the other boys." My brother John had some 
fine play-fellows, but he seemed to consider me in 
the way when they were his guests. Occasionally 
we would forget that the neighbor-boys were not 
girls, and would find ourselves all playing to- 
gether in delightful unconsciousness ; although 
possibly a thought, like that of the " Ettrick 
Shepherd," may now and then have flitted through 
the mind of some masculine juvenile : — 



110 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

"Why the boys should drive away 
Little sweet maidens from the play, 
Or love to banter and fight so well, — 
That 's the thing I never could tell." 



One day I thoughtlessly accepted an invitation 
to get through a gap in the garden-fence, to 
where the doctor's two boys were preparing to 
take an imaginary sleigh - ride in midsummer. 
The sleigh was stranded among tall weeds and 
cornstalks, but I was politely handed in by the 
elder boy, who sat down by my side and tucked 
his little brother in front at our feet, informing 
me that we were father and mother and little son, 
going to take a ride to Newbui'yport. He had 
found an old pair of reins and tied them to a saw- 
horse, that he switched and " Gee-up "-ed vigor- 
ously. The journey was as brief as delightful. 
I ran liome feeling like the heroine of an elope- 1 
ment, asking myself meanwhile, " What would " 
my brother John say if he knew I liad been play- 
ing with boys ? " He was very particular about 
his sisters' behavior. But I incautiously said to 
one sister in whom I did not usually confide, that 
I thought James was the nicest boy in the lane, 
and that I liked his little brother Charles, too. 
She laughed at me so unmercifully for making 
the remark, that I never dared look towards the 
gap in the fence again, beyond which I could hear 
the boys' voices around the old sleigh where they 
were playing, entirely forgetful of their former 



OLD NEW ENGLAND. Ill 

traveling companioii. Still, I continued to think 
that my courteous cavalier, James, was the nicest 
boy in the lane. 

My brother's vigilant care of his two youngest 
sisters was once the occasion to them of a serious 
fright. My grandfather — the sexton — some- 
times trusted him to toll the bell for a funeral. In 
those days the bell was tolled for everybody who 
died. John was social, and did not like to go up 
into the belfry and stay an hour or so alone, and 
as my grandfather positively forbade him to take 
any other boy up there, he one day got permis- 
sion for us two little girls to go with him, for 
company. We had to climb up a great many 
stairs, and the last flight was inclosed by a rough 
door with a lock inside, which he was charged to 
fasten, so that no mischievous boys should follow. 

It was strange to be standing up there in the 
air, gazing over the balcony-railing down into the 
street, where the men and women looked so small, 
and across to the water and the ships in the east, 
and the clouds and hills in the west ! But when 
he struck the tongue against the great bell, close 
to our ears, it was more than we were prepared 
for. The little sister, scarcely three years old, 
screamed and shrieked, — 

" I shall be stunned-ded ! I shall be stunned- 
ded ! " I do not know where she had picked up 
that final syllable, but it made her terror much 
more emphatic. Still the great waves of solemn 



112 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

sound went eddying on, over the hills and over 
the sea, and we had to hear it all, though we 
stopped our ears with our fingers. It was an 
immense relief to us when the last stroke of the 
passing-bell was struck, and John said we could 
go down. 

He took the key from his pocket and was fit- 
ting it into the lock, when it slipped, dropping 
down through a wide crack in the floor, beyond 
our reach. Now the little sister cried again, and 
would not be pacified ; and when I looked up and 
caught John's blank, dismayed look, I began to 
feel like crying, too. The question went swiftly 
through my mind, — How many days can we stay 
up here without starving to death ? — for I really 
thought we should never get down out of our 
prison in the air : never see our mother's face 
again. 

But my brother's wits returned to him. H( 
led us back to the balcony, and shouted over th 
railing to a boy in the street, making him un- 
derstand that he must go and inform my father 
that we were locked into the belfi'y. It was no< 
long before we saw both him and my grandfathel 
on their way to the church. They came up tc 
the little door, and told us to push with our united 
strength against it. The rusty lock soon yielded! 
and how good it was to look into those two beloved 
human faces once more ! But we little girls were 
not invited to join my brother again when he 



OLD NEW ENGLAND. 113 

tolled the bell : if we had been, I think we should 
have promptly declined the invitation. 

Many of my childish misadventures came to 
me in connection with my little sister, who, hav- 
ing been much indulged, took it for granted that 
she could always have what she wanted. 

One day we two were allowed to take a walk 
together; I, as the older, being supposed to take 
care of her. Although we were only going towards 
the Cove, oyer a secluded road, she insisted upon 
wearing a brand-new pair of red morocco boots. 
All went well until we came to a bog by the road- 
side, where sweet-flag and cat-tails grew. Out 
in the middle of the bog, where no venturesome 
boy had ever attempted their seizure, there were 
many tall, fine-looking bi'own cat-tails growing. 
She caught sight of them, and before I saw what 
she was doing, she had shot from my side like 
an arrow fi'om the bow, and was far out on the 
black, quaking surface, that at first upheld her 
light weight. I stood petrified with horror. I 
knew all about that dangerous place. I had been 
told that nobody had ever found out how deep 
that mud was. I had uttered just one imploring 
" Come back ! " when she turned to me with a 
shriek, throwing up her arms towards me. She 
was sinking ! There was nobody in sight, and 
there was no time to think. I ran, or rather flew, 
across the bog, with just one thought in my mind, 
" I have got to get her out ! " Some angel must 



114 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

have prevented me from making a misstep, and 
sinking with her. I felt the power of a giant 
suddenly taking possession of my small frame. 
Quicker than I could tell of it, I had given one 
tremendous pull (she had already sunk above her 
boot-tojis), and had dragged her back to the road. 
It is a marvel to me now how I — a child of 
scarcely six years — succeeded in rescuing her. It 
did not seem to me as if I were doing it myself, 
but as if some unseen Power had taken possession 
of me for a moment, and made me do it. And I 
suppose that when we act from a sudden impulse 
to help another out of trouble, it never is ourself 
that does the good deed. The Highest Strength 
just takes us and uses us. I certainly felt equal 
to going straight through the earth to China after 
my little sister, if she had sunk out of sight. 

We were two miserable looking children when 
we reached home, the sticky ooze having changed 
her feet into unmanageable lumps of mud, with 
which my own clothes also were soiled. I had to 
drag or carry her all the way, for she could not 
or would not walk a step. And alas for the mo- 
rocco boots ! They were never again red. I also 
received a scolding for not taking better care of 
my little sister, and I was not very soon allowed 
again to have her company in my rambles. 

We usually joined with other little neighbor 
girls in some out-of-door amusement near home. 
And our sports, as well as our books, had a spice 



.1 



OLD NEW ENGLAND. 115 

o£ Merry Old England. They were full of kings 
and queens, and made sharp contrasts, as well as 
odd mixtures, with the homeliness of our every- 
day life. 

One of them, a sort of rhymed dialogue, began 
with the couplet : — 

" Queen Anne, Queen Anne, she sits in the sun, 
As fair as a lady, as white as a nun." 

If " Queen Anne " did not give a right guess as 
to which hand of the messenger held the king's 
letter to her, she was contemptuously informed 
that she was 

" as brown as a bun." 

In another game, four little girls joined hands 
across, in couples, chanting : — 

' ' I wish my father were a king, 
I wish my mother were a queen, 
And I a little companion ! ' ' 

concluding with a close embrace in a dizzying 
whirl, breathlessly shouting all together, — 

" A bundle of fagots ! A bundle of fagots ! " 

In a third, which may have begun with a juve- 
nile reacting of the Colonial struggle for liberty, 
we ranged ourselves under two leaders, who made 
an archway over our heads of their lifted hands 
and arms, saying, as we passed beneath, — 

" Lift up the gates as high as the sky, 
I And let King George and his army pass by ! " 

' We were told to whisper "" Oranges " or 



116 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

" Lemons " for a pass-word ; and " Oranges " al- 
ways won the larger enlistment, whether British 
or American. 

And then there was " Grandmother Gray," and 
the 

" Old woman from Newfoundland, 
With all her children in her hand ; " 

and the 

' ' Knight from Spain 
Inquiring for your daughter Jane," 

and numberless others, nearly all of them bearing 
a distinct Old World flavor. 

One of our play-places was an unoccupied end 
of the burying-ground, overhung by the Colonel's 
apple-trees and close under his wall, so that we 
should not be too near the grave-stones. 

I do not think that death was at all a real thin 
to me or to my brothers and sisters at this time.' 
We lived so near the grave-yard that it seemed 
merely the extension of our garden. We wan- 
dered there at will, trying to decipher the moss- 
grown inscriptions, and wondering at the liomelj4 
carvings of cross-bones and cherubs and willow-, 
trees on the gray slate-stones. I did not associate 
those long green mounds with people who had once 
lived, though we were careful, having been so in- 
structed, not to step on the graves. To ramble 
about there and puzzle ourselves with the names 
and dates, was like turning over the pages of a 
curious old book. We had not the least feeling of 
irreverence in taking the edge of the grave-yard 



^e 

J 



OLD NEW ENGLAND. 117 

for our playground. It was known as " the old 
burying-ground " ; and we children regarded it 
with a sort of affectionate freedom, as we would 
a grandmother, heccmse it was old. 

That, indeed, was one peculiar attraction of the 
town itself ; it was old, and it seemed old, much 
older than it does now. There was only one main 
street, said to have been the first settlers' cowpath 
to Wenhara, which might account for its zigzag 
picturesqueness. All the rest were courts or lanes. 

The town used to wear a delightful air of 
drowsiness, as if she had stretched herself out for 
an afternoon nap, with her head towards her old 
mother, Salem, and her whole length reclining 
towards the sea, till she felt at her feet, through 
her green robes, the dip of the deep water at the 
Farms. All her elder children recognized in her 
quiet steady -going ways a maternal unity and 
strength of character, as of a town that under- 
stood her own plans, and had settled down to 
peaceful, permanent habits. 

Her spirit was that of most of our Massachu- 
setts coast-towns. They were transplanted shoots 
of Old England. And it was the voice of a mother- 
country more ancient than their own, that little 
children heard crooning across the sea in their 
cradle-hymns and nursery-songs. 



VI. 

GLIMPSES OF POETET. 

Our close relationship to Old England was 
sometimes a little misleading to us juveniles. The 
conditions of our life were entirely different, but 
we read her descriptive stories and sang her songa 
as if they were true for us, too. One of the firs^ 
things I learned to repeat — I think it was in the 
spelling-book — began with the verse : — 

" I thank the goodness and the grace 
That on my birth has smiled, 
And made me, in these latter days, 
A happy English child." 

And some lines of a very familiar hymn by Dr. 
Watts ran thus : — 



" Whene'er I take my walks abroad, 
How m.any poor I see. 

" How many children in the street 
Half naked I behold ; 
While I am clothed from head to feet, 
And sheltered from the cold." 



I 



Now a ragged, half-clothed child, or one that 
could really be called poor, in the extreme sense of 
the word, was the rarest of all sights in a thrifty 
New England town fifty years ago. I used to look 
sharply for those children, but I never could see 



GLIMPSES OF POETRY. 119 

one. And a beggar ! Oh, if a real beggar would 
come along, like the one described in 

" Pity the sorrows of a poor old man," 

what a wonderful event that would be ! I believe 
I had more curiosity about a beggar, and more 
ignorance, too, than about a king. The poem 
read : — 

" A pampered menial drove me from tlie door." 

What sort of creature could a " pampered me- 
nial " be ? Nothing that had ever come under our 
observation corresponded to the words. Nor was 
it easy for us to attach any meaning to the word 
" servant." There were women who came in occa-"^ 
sionally to do the washing, or to help about extra 
work. But they were decently clothed, and had 
homes of their own, more or less comfortable, and 
their quaint talk and free-and-easy ways were 
often as much of a lift to the household as the 
actual assistance they rendered. 

I settled down upon the conclusion that " rich " 
and " poor " were book - words only, describing 
something far off, and having nothing to do with 
our every-day experience. My mental definition 
of " rich people," from home observation, was 
something like this : People who live in three- 
story houses, and keep their green blinds closed, 
and hardly ever come out and talk with the folks 
in the street. There were a few such houses in 
Beverly, and a great many in Salem, where my 



120 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

mother sometimes took me for a shopping walk. 
But I did not suppose that any of the people who 
lived near us were very rich, like those in books. 

Everybody about us worked, and we expected 
to take hold of our part while young. I think we 
.were rather eager to begin, for we believed that 
work would make men and women of us. 

I, however, was not naturally an industrious 
child, but quite the reverse. When ray father 
sent us down to weed his vegetable-garden at the 
foot of the lane, I, the youngest of his weeders, 
liked to go with the rest, but not for the sake of 
the work or the pay. I generally gave it up be-t 
fore I had weeded half a bed. It made me so 
warm ! and my back did ache so ! I stole off into 
the shade of the great apple-trees, and let the 
west wind fan my hot cheeks, and looked up into 
the boughs, and listened to the many, many birdi^ 
that seemed chattering to each other in a language 
of their own. What was it they were saying ?| 
and why could not I understand it ? Perhaps lij 
should, sometime. I had read of people who did, 
in fairy tales. 

When the others started homeward, I followed;* 
I did not mind their calling me lazy, nor that my 
father gave me only one tarnished copper cent, 
while Lida received two or three bright ones. I 
had had what I wanted most. I would rather 
sit under the apple-trees and hear the birds sing 
than have a whole handful of bright copper pen- 



GLIMPSES OF POETRY. 121 

nies. It was well for my father and his garden 
that his other children were not like me. 

The work which I was born to, but had not be- 
gun to do, was sometimes a serious weight upon 
my small, forecasting brain. 

One of my hymns ended with the lines, — 

" With books, and work, and healthful play, 
May my first years be passed. 
That I may give, for every day, 
Some good account at last." 

I knew all about the books and the play ; but 
the work, — how should I ever learn to do it ? 

My father had always strongly emphasized his 
wish that all his children, girls as well as boys, 
should have some independent means of self-sup- 
port by the labor of their hands ; that every one 
should, as was the general custom, " learn a trade." 
Tailor's work — the finishing of men's outside 
garments — was the " trade " learned most fre- 
quently by women in those days, and one or more 
of my older sisters worked at it ; I think it must 
have been at home, for I somehow or somewhere 
got the idea, while I was a small child, that the 
chief end of woman was to make clothing for 
mankind. 

This thought came over me with a sudden 
dread one Sabbath morning when I was a tod- 
dling thing, led along by my sister, behind my 
father and mother. As they walked arm in arm 
before me, I lifted my eyes from my father's heels 



122 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

to his head, and mused : " How tall he is ! and 
how long his coat looks ! and how many thousand, 
thousand stitches there must be in his coat and 
pantaloons! And I suppose I have got to grow 
up and have a husband, and put all those little 
stitches into his coats and pantaloons. Oh, I 
never, never can do it! " A shiver of utter dis- 
couragement went through me. With that task 
before me, it hardly seemed to me as if life were 
worth living. I went on to meeting, and I sup- 
pose I forgot my trouble in a hymn, but for the 
moment it was real. It was not the only time in 
my life that I have tired myself out with crossing 
bridges to which I never came. 

Another trial confronted me in the shape of an 
ideal but impossible patchwork quilt. We learned j 
to sew patchwork at school, while we were learn- 
ing the alphabet ; and almost every girl, large or 
small, had a bed-quilt of her own begun, with an. 
eye to future house furnishing. I was not over? I 
fond of sewing, but I thought it best to begin 
mine eai-ly. 

So I collected a few squares of calico, and un- 
dertook to put them together in my usual inde- 
pendent way, without asking direction. I liked as-:' 
sorting those little figured bits of cotton cloth, for' 
they were scraps of gowns I had seen worn, and 
they reminded me of the persons who wore them. 
One fragment, in particular, was like a picture to 
me. It was a delicate pink and brown sea-moss 



i 



GLIMPSES OF POETRY. 123. 

pattern, on a white ground, a piece of a dress be- 
longing to my married sister, who was to me bride 
and angel in one. I always saw her face before 
me when I unfolded this scrap, — a face with an 
expression truly heavenly in its loveliness. Heaven 
claimed her before my childhood was ended. Her 
beautiful form was laid to rest in mid-ocean, too 
deep to be pillowed among the soft sea-mosses. 
But she lived long enough to make a heaven of 
my childhood whenever she came home. 

One of the sweetest of our familiar hymns I 
always think of as belonging to her, and as a still 
unbroken bond between her spirit and mine. She 
had come back to us for a brief visit, soon after 
her marriage, with some deep, new experience of 
sj)iritual realities which I, a child of four or five 
years, felt in the very tones of her voice, and in 
the expression of her eyes. 

My mother told her of my fondness for the 
hymn-book, and she turned to me with a smile 
and said, " Won't you learn one hymn for me — 
one hymn that I love very much ? " 

Would I not ? She could not guess how happy 
she made me by wishing me to do anything for 
her sake. The hymn was, — 

" Whilst Thee I seek, protecting Power." 

In a few minutes I repeated the whole to her ; 
and its own beauty, pervaded with the tender- 
ness of her love for aie, fixed it at once indelibly 



124 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

in my memory. Perhaps I shall repeat it to her 
again, deepened with a lifetime's meaning, be- 
yond the sea, and beyond the stars. 

I coidd dream over my patchwork, but I could 
not bring it into conventional shape. My sisters, 
whose fingers had been educated, called my sew- 
ing "gobblings." I grew disgusted with it my- 
self, and gave away all my pieces except the pretty 
sea-moss pattern, which I was not willing to see 
patched up with common calico. It was evident 
that I should never conquer fate with my needle. 

Among other domestic traditions of the old 
times was the saying that every girl must have a 
pillow-case full of stockings of her own knitting 
before she was married. Here was another moun- 
tain before me, for I took it for granted that 
marrying was inevitable — one of the things that 
everybody must do, like learning to read, or go- 
ing to meeting. 

I began to knit my own stockings when I was six 
or seven years old, and kept on, until home-made 
stockings went out of fashion. The pillow-case 
full, however, was never attempted, any more than 
the patchwork quilt. I heard somebody say one " 
day that there must always be one " old maid " in 
every family of girls, and I accepted the prophecy ! 
of some of my elders, that I was to be that one. 
I was rather glad to know that freedom of choice . 
in the matter was possible. 

One day, when we younger ones were hanging 



II 



GLIMPSES OF POETRY. 125 

about ray golden -haired and golden-hearted sis- 
ter Emilie, teasing her with wondering questions 
about our future, she announced to us (she had 
reached the mature age of fifteen years) that she 
intended to be an old maid, and that we might all 
come and live with her. Some one listening re- 
proved her, but she said, " Why, if they fit them- 
selves to be good, helpful, cheerful old maids, 
they will certainly be better wives, if they ever 
are married," and that maxim I laid by in my 
memory for future contingencies, for I believed 
in every word she ever uttered. She herself, how- 
ever, did not carry out her girlish intention. 
" Her children arise up and call her blessed ; her 
husband also ; and he praiseth her." But the 
little sisters she used to fondle as her " babies " 
have never allowed their own years nor her 
changed relations to cancel their claim upon her 
motherly sympathies. 

I regard it as a great privilege to have been one 
of a large family, and nearly the youngest. We 
had strong family resemblances, and yet no two 
seemed at all alike. It was like rehearsing in a 
small world each our own part in the great one 
awaiting us. If we little ones occasionally had 
some severe snubbing mixed with the petting and 
praising and loving, that was wholesome for us, 
and not at all to be regretted. 

Almost eveiy one of my sisters had some dis- 
tinctive aptitude with her fingers. One worked 



126 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

exquisite lace-embroidery; another had a knack 
at cutting and fitting her doll's clothing so per- 
fectly that the wooden lady was always a typical 
specimen of the genteel doll-world ; and another 
was an expert at fine stitching, so delicately done 
that it was a pleasure to see or to wear anything 
her needle had touched. I had none of these 
gifts. I looked on and admired, and sometimes 
tried to imitate, but my eiforts usually ended in 
defeat and mortification. 

I did like to knit, however, and I could shape 
a stocking tolerably well. My fondness for this 
kind of work was chiefly because it did not re- 
quire much thought. Except when there was 
" widening " or " narrowing " to be done, I did not 
need to keep my eyes upon it at all. So I took 
a book upon my lap and read, and read, while 
the needles clicked on, comforting me with the 
reminder that I was not absolutely unemployed, 
while yet I was having a good time reading. 

I began to know that I liked poetry, and to 
think a good deal about it at my childish work. 
Outside of the hymn-book, the first rhymes I 
committed to memory were in the " Old Farmer's 
Almanac," files of which hung in the chimney 
corner, and were an inexhaustible source of en- 
tertainment to us youngei" ones. 

My father kept his newspapers also carefully 
filed away in the garret, but we made sad havoc 
among the " Palladiums " and other journals that 



GLIMPSES OF POETRY. 127 

we ought to have kept as antiquarian treasures. 
We valued the anecdote column and the poet's 
corner only ; these we clipped unsparingly for our 
scrap-books. 

A tattered copy of Johnson's large Dictionary 
was a great delight to me, on account of the spe- 
cimens of English versification which I found in 
the Introduction. I learned them as if they were 
so many poems. I used to keep this old volume 
close to my pillow ; and I amused myself when I 
awoke in the morning by reciting its jingling con- 
trasts of iambic and trochaic and dactylic metre, 
and thinking what a charming occupation it must 
be to " make up " verses. 

I made my first rhymes when I was about 
seven years old. My brother John proposed 
" writing poetry " as a rainy-day amusement, one 
afternoon when we two were sent up into the gar- 
ret to entertain ourselves without disturbino' the 
family. He soon grew tired of his unavailing 
attempts, but I produced two stanzas, the first of 
which read thus : — 

" One summer day, said little Jane, 
We were walking down a shady lane, 
When suddenly the wind blew high, 
And the red lightning flashed in the sky." 

The second stanza descended in a dreadfully 
abrupt anti-climax ; but I was blissfully ignorant 
of rhetoricians' rules, and supposed that the rhyme 






128 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

was the only important thing. It may amuse my 
child-readers if I give them this verse too : — 

"The peals of thunder, how they rolled! 
A7id I felt myself a little cooled ; 
For I before had been quite warm ; 
But now around me was a storm." 

My brother was surprised at my success, and I 
believe I thought my verses quite fine, too. But 
I was rather sorry that I had written them, for I 
had to say them over to the family, and then 
they sounded silly. The habit was formed, how- 
ever, and I went on writing little books of ballads, 
which I illustrated with colors from my toy paint-' 
box, and then squeezed down into the cracks of 
the garret floor, for fear that somebody would 
find them. 

My fame crept out among the neighbors, never-' 
theless. I was even invited to write some verses 
in a young lady's album ; and Aunt Hannah 
asked me to repeat my verses to her. I con-; 
sidered myself greatly honored by both requests. 

My fondness for books began very early. At 
the age of four I had formed the plan of col- 
lecting a library. Not of limp, paper-covered 
picture-books, such as people give to babies ; no ! 
I wanted books with stiff covers, that could stand 
up side by side on a shelf, and maintain their 
own character as books. But I did not know 
how to make a beginning, for mine were all of 
the kind manufactured for infancy, and I thought 



** 1 



GLIMPSES OF POETRY. 129 

they deserved no better fate than to be tossed 
about among my rag-babies and playthings. 

One day, however, I found among some rubbish 
in a corner a volume with one good stiff cover ; 
the other was missing. It did not look so very 
old, nor as if it had been much read ; neither did 
it look very inviting to me as I turned its leaves. 
On its title-page I read : " The Life of John Cal- 
vin." I did not know who he was, but a book 
was a book to me, and this would do as well as 
any to begin my library with. I looked upon it 
as a treasure, and to make sure of my claim, I 
took it down to my mother and timidly asked if 
I might have It for my own. She gave me In 
reply a rather amused " Yes," and I ran back 
happy, and began my library by setting John 
Calvin upright on a beam under the garret eaves, 
my " make-believe " book-case shelf. 

I was proud of my literary property, and filled 
out the shelf in fancy with a row of books, every 
one of which should have two stiff covers. But 
I found no more neglected volumes that I could 
adopt. John Calvin was left to a lonely fate, and 
I am afraid that at last the mice devoured him. 
Before I had quite forgotten him, however, I 
did pick up one other book of about his size, and 
in the same one-covered condition ; and this at- 
tracted me more, because it was in verse. Rhyme 
had always a sort of magnetic power over me, 
whether I caught at any idea it contained or not. 



130 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

This was written in the measure which I after- 
wards learned was called Spenserian. It was 
Byron's " Vision of Judgment," and South ey's 
also was bound up with it. 

Southey's hexameters were too much of a 
mouthful for me, but Byron's lines jingled, and 
apparently told a story about something, St. Pe 
ter came into it, and King George the Third ; nei 
ther of which names meant anything to me ; bul 
the scenery seemed to be somewhere up among 
the clouds, and I, unsuspicious of the author's ir 
reverence, took it for a sort of semi-Biblical fairj 
tale. 

There was on my mother's bed a covering o: 
pink chintz, pictured all over with the figure of 
man sitting on a cloud, holding a bunch of keys 
I put the two together in my mind, imagining th< 
chintz counterpane to be an illustration of th< 
poem, or the poem an explanation of the counter 
pane. For the stanza I liked best began with th^ 
words, — J 

" St. Peter sat at tlie celestial g'ate, » 

And nodded o'er his keys." ' I 

I invented a pronunciation for the long words, and 
went about the house reciting grandly, — 

" St. Peter sat at the kelestikal gate, 
And nodded o'er his keys." 

That volume, swept back to me with the rub- 
bish of Time, still reminds me, forlorn an 1 half- 






GLIMPSES OF POETRY. 131 

clad, of my childish fondness for its mock-mag- 
nificence. 

John Calvin and Lord Byron were rather a 
peculiar combination, as the foundation of an in- 
fant's librai'y ; but I was not aware of any unfit- 
ness or incompatibility. To me they were two 
brother-books, like each other in their refusal to 
wear limp covers. 

It is amusing to recall the rapid succession of 
contrasts in one child's tastes. I felt no incon- 
gruity between Dr. Watts and Mother Goose. I 
supplemented " Pibroch of Donnil Dhu " and 

" Locliiel, Loehiel, beware of the day," 

with " Yankee Doodle " and the " Diverting His- 
tory of John Gilpin ; " and with the glamour of 
some fairy tale I had just read still haunting me, 
I would run out of doors eating a big piece of 
bread and butter, — sweeter than any has tasted 
since, — and would jump up towards the crows 
cawing high above me, cawing back to them, and 
half wishing I too wei'e a crow to make the sky 
ring with my glee. 

After Dr. Watts's hymns the first poetry I took 
great delight in greeted me upon the pages of the 
" American First Class Book," handed down from 
older pupils in the little private school which my 
sisters and I attended when Aunt Hannah had 
done all she could for us. That book was a col- 
lection of excellent literary extracts, made by 



132 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

one who was himself an author and a poet. It 
deserved to be called " first-class " in another 
sense than that which was understood by its title. 
I cannot think that modern reading books have 
improved upon it much. It contained poems from 
Wordsworth, passages from Shakespeai'e's plays, 
among them the pathetic dialogue between Hu- 
bert and little Prince Arthur, whose appeal to 
have his eyes spared, brought many a tear to my 
own. Bryant's "Waterfowl" and " Thanatopsis " 
were there also ; and Neal's, — 

" There 's a fierce gray bird with a bending beak," 

that the boys loved so dearly to " declaim ; " and 
another poem by this last author, which we all 
liked to read, partly from a childish love of the 
tragic, and partly for its graphic description of 
an avalanche's movement : — 

" Slowly it came in its mountain wrath, 
And the forests vanished before its path ; 
And the nide cliffs bowed ; and the waters fled, — 
And the valley of life was the tomb of the dead." 

In reading this " Swiss Minstrel's Lament over 
the Ruins of Goldau," I first felt my imagination 
thrilled with the terrible beauty of the mountains 
— a terror and a sublimity which attracted my 
thoughts far more than it awed them. But the 
poem in which they burst upon me as real pres- 
ences, unseen, yet known in their remote splendor 
as kingly friends before whom I could bow, yet 



GLIMPSES OF POETRY. 133 

with whom I could aspire, — for something- like this 
I think mountains must always be to those who 
truly love them, — was Coleridge's " Mont Blanc 
before Sunrise," in this same " First Class Book." 
I believe that poetry really first took possession of 
me in that poem, so that afterwards I could not 
easily mistake the genuineness of its ring, though 
my ear might not be sufficiently trained to catch 
its subtler harmonies. This great mountain poem 
struck some hidden key-note in my nature, and I 
knew thenceforth something of what it was to live 
in poetry, and to have it live in me. Of course 
I did not consider my own foolish little versify- 
ing poetry. The child of eight or nine years re- 
garded her rhymes as only one among her many 
games and pastimes. 

But with this ideal picture of mountain scenery 
there came to me a revelation of poetry as the one 
unattainable something which I must reach out 
after, because I could not live without it. The 
thought of it was to me like the thought of God 
and of truth. To leave out poetry would be to 
lose the real meaning of life. I felt this very 
blindly and vaguely, no doubt ; but the feeling was 
deep. It was as if Mont Blanc stood visibly be- 
fore me, while I murmured to myself in lonely 
places — 

' ' Motionless torrents ! silent cataracts ! 
Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven 
Beneath the keen full moon ? Who bade the sun 
Clothe you with rainbows ? Who with lovely flowers 
Of living blue spread garlands at your feet ? ' ' 



134 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

And then the 

" Pine groves with their soft and soul-like sound " 

gave glorious answer, with the streams and tor- 
rents, and my child-heart in its trance echoed the 
poet's invocation, — 

"Rise, like a cloud of incense from the earth! 
And tell the stars, and tell the rising sun. 
Earth, with her thousand voices, calls on God ! ' ' 

I have never visited Switzerland, but I surely 
saw the Alps, with Coleridge, in my childhood. 
And although I never stood face to face with 
mountains until I was a mature woman, always, 
after this vision of them, they were blended with 
my dream of whatever is pure and lofty in hu- 
man possibilities, — like a white ideal beckoning 
me on. 

Since I am winting these recollections for the 
young, I may say here that I regard a love for 
poetry as one of the most needful and helpful 
elements in the life-outfit of a human being. It 
was the greatest of blessings to me, in the long 
days of toil to which I was shut in much earlier 
than most young girls are, that the poetry I held 
in my memory breathed its enchanted atmosphere 
through me and around me, and touched even dull 
drudgery with its sunshine. 

Hard work, however, has its own illumination 
— if done as duty — which worldliness has not; 
and worldliness seems to be the greatest tempta- 



GLIMPSES OF POETRY. 135 

tion and danger of young people in this genera- 
tion. Poetry is one of the angels whose presence 
will drive out this sordid demon, if anything less 
than the Power of the Highest can. But poetry 
is of the Highest. It is the Divine Voice, always, 
that we recognize through the poet's, whenever 
he most deeply moves our souls. 

Reason and observation, as well as my own ex- 
perience, assure me also that it is great poetry — 
even the greatest — which the youngest crave, and. 
upon which they may be fed, because it is the sim- 
plest. Nature does not write down her sunsets, 
her starry skies, her mountains, and her oceans in 
some smaller style, to suit the comprehension of 
little children ; they do not need any such dilution. 

So I go back to the " American First Class 
Book," and affirm it to have been one of the best 
of reading-books, because it gave us children a 
taste of the finest poetry and prose which had been 
written in our English tongue, by British and by 
American authors. Among the pieces which left 
a permanent impression upon my mind I recall 
Wirt's description of the eloquent blind preacher 
to whom he listened in the forest wilderness of the 
Blue Ridge, a remarkable word-portrait, in which 
the very tones of the sightless speaker's voice 
seemed to be reproduced. I believe that the first 
I words I ever remembered of any sermon were 
those contained in the grand, brief sentence, — 
I " Socrates died like a philosopher ; but Jesus 
iChrist — likeaGod!" 



136 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

Very vivid, too, is the recollection of the exqui- 
site little prose idyl of " Moss-Side," from " Lights 
and Shadows of Scottish Life." 

From the few short words with which it began 
— " Gilbert Ainslee was a poor man, and he had 
been a poor man all the days of his life " — to the 
hajjpy waking of his little daughter Margaret out 
of her fever-sleep with which it ended, it was one 
sweet picture of lowly life and honorable poverty 
irradiated with sacred home-affections, and cheer- 
ful in its rustic homeliness as the blossoms and 
wild birds of the moorland and the magic touch 
of Christopher North could make it. I thought 
as I read, — 

" How much pleasanter it must be to be poor 
than to be rich — at least in Scotland ! " 

For I was beginning to be made aware that 
poverty was a possible visitation to our own house- 
hold ; and that, in our Cape Ann corner of Mas- 
sachusetts, we might find it neither comfortable 
nor picturesque. After my father's death, our 
way of living, never luxurious, grew more and 
more frugal. Now and then I heard mysterious 
allusions to "the wolf at the door"; and it was 
whispered that, to escape him, we might all have 
to turn our backs upon the home where we were 
born, and find our safety in the busy world, work- 
ing among strangers for our daily bread. Before 
I had re'Uihed my tenth year I began to have j 
rather disturbed dreams of what it might soon 
mean for me to " earn my own living." 



VII. 

BEGINNING TO WORK. 

A CHILD does not easily comprehend even the 
plain fact of death. Though I had looked upon 
my father's still, pale face in his coffin, the im- 
pression it left upon me was of sleep ; more peace- 
ful and sacred than common slumber, yet only 
sleep. My dreams of him were for a long time 
so vivid that I would say to myself, " He was here 
yesterday ; he will be here again to - morrow," 
with a feeling that amounted to expectation. 

We missed him, we children large and small 
who made up the yet untrained home crew, as a 
ship misses the man at the helm. His grave, 
clear perception of what was best for us, his 
brief words that decided, once- for all, the course 
we were to take, had been far more to us than 
we knew. 

It was hardest of all for my mother, who had 
been accustomed to depend entirely upon him. 
Left with her eight children, the eldest a boy of 
eighteen years, and with no property except the 
roof that sheltered us and a small strip of land, 
her situation was full of perplexil^s which we 
little ones could not at all understand. To be 



138 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

fed like the ravens and clothed like the grass of 
the field seemed to me, for one, a perfectly nat- 
ural thing, and I often wondered why my mother 
was so fretted and anxious. 

I knew that she believed in God, and in the 
promises of the Bible, and yet she seemed some- 
times to forget everything but her troubles and 
her helplessness. I felt almost like preaching to 
her, but I was too small a child to do that, I well 
knew ; so I did the next best thing I could think 
of — I sang hymns as if singing to myself, while 
I meant them for her. Sitting at the window 
with my book and my knitting, while she was pre- 
paring dinner or supper with a depressed air be- 
cause she missed the abundant provision to which 
she had been accustomed, I would go from hymn 
to hymn, selecting those which I thought would 
be most comforting to her, out of the many that 
my memory-book contained, and taking care to 
pronounce the words distinctly. 

I was glad to observe that she listened to 

"Come, ye disconsolate," 

and 

" How firm a foundation ; " 
and that she grew more cheerful ; though I did 
not feel sure that my singing cheered her so much 
as some happier thought that had come to her 
out of her own heart. Nobody but my mother, 
indeed, would have called my chirping singing. 
But as she did not seem displeased, I went on, 



BEGINNING TO WORK. 139 

a little more confidently, with some hymns that I 
loved for their starry suggestions, — 

"When marshaled on the nightly plain," 

and 

" Brightest and best of the sons of the morning," 

and 

" Watchman, tell us of the night ? " 

The most beautiful picture in the Bible to me, 
certainly the loveliest in the Old Testament, had 
always been that one painted by prophecy, of the 
time when wild and tame creatures should live to- 
gether in peace, and children should be their fear- 
less playmates. Even the savage wolf Poverty 
would be pleasant and neighborly then, no doubt ! 
A Little Child among them, leading them, stood 
looking wistfully down thi-ough the soft sunrise 
of that approaching day, into the cold and dark- 
ness of the world. Oh, it would be so much bet- 
ter than the garden of Eden ! 

Yes, and it would be a great deal better, I 
thought, to live in the millennium, than even to 
die and go to heaven, although so many people 
around me talked as if that were the most desir- 
able thing of all. But I could never understand 
why, if God sent us here, we should be in haste 
to get away, even to go to a pleasanter place. 

I was perplexed by a good many matters be- 
sides. I had learned to keep most of my thoughts 
to myself, but I did venture to ask about the Res- 
surrection — how it was that those who had died 
and gone straight to heaven, and had been sing- 



140 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

ing there for thousands of years, could have any 
use for the dust to which their bodies had re- 
turned. Were they not already as alive as they 
could be ? I found that there were different ideas 
of the resurrection among "orthodox" people, 
even then. I was told however, that this was too 
deep a matter for me, and so I ceased asking ques- 
tions. But I pondered the matter of death ; what 
did it mean ? The Apostle Paul gave me more 
light on the subject than any of the ministers did. 
And, as usual, a poem helped me. It was Pope's 
Ode, beginning with, — 

" Vital spark of heayenly flame," — 

which I learned out of a reading-book. To die 
was to "languish into life." That was the mean- 
ing of it ! and I loved to repeat to myself the 
words, — 

" Hark ! tliey whisper : angels say, 
' Sister spirit, come away ! ' — 

The world recedes ; it disappears ! 
Heaven opens on my eyes ! my ears 
With sounds seraphic ring." 

A hymn that I learned a little later expressed 
to me the same satisfying thought : — ' 

"For strangers into life we come, 
And dying is but going home." 

The Apostle's words, with which the song of 
" The Dying Christian to his Soul " ends, left the! 
whole cloudy question lit up with sunshine, to ray' 
childish thoughts : — 



BEGINNING TO WORK. 141 

" O grave, where is thy victory ? 
O death, where is thy sting ? " 

My father was dead ; but that only meant that 
he had gone to a better home than the one he 
lived in with us, and by and by we should go 
home, too. 

Meanwhile the millennium was coming, and 
some people thought it was very near. And what 
was the millennium ? Why, the time when every- 
body on earth would live just as they do in 
heaven. Nobody would be selfish, nobody would 
be unkind ; no ! not so much as in a single 
thought. What a delightful world this would be 
to live in then ! Heaven itself could scarcely be 
much better; Perhaps people would not die at 
all, but, when the right time came, would slip 
quietly away into heaven, just as Enoch did. 

My father had believed in the near millennium. 
His very last writing, in his sick-room, was a 
penciled computation, from the prophets, of the 
time when it would begin. The first minister 
who preached in our church, long before I was 
born, had studied the subject much, and had writ- 
ten books upon this, his favorite theme. The 
thought of it was continually breaking out, like 
bloom and sunshine, from the stern doctrines of 
the period. 

One question in this connection puzzled me a 
good deal. Were people going to be made good 
[in spite of themselves, whether they wanted to or 



\ 



142 A NE W ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

not ? And what would be done with the bad ones, 
if there were any left? I did not like to think 
of their being killed off, and yet everybody must 
be good, or it would not be a true millennium. 

It certainly would not matter much who was 
rich, and who was poor, if goodness, and not 
money, was the thing everybody cared for. Oh, if 
the millennium would only begin now ! I felt as 
if it were hardly fair to me that I should not be 
here during those happy thousand years, when I 
wanted to so much. But I had not lived even my 
short life in the world without learning some- 
thing of my own faults and perversities ; and 
when I saw that there was no sign of an approach- 
ing millennium in my heart I had to conclude 
that it might be a great way off, after all. Yet 
the very thought of it brought warmth and illu- 
mination to my dreams by day and by night. It 
was coming, some time ! And the people who 
were in heaven would be as glad of it as those 
who remained on earth. 

That it was a hard woi'ld for njy mother and 
her children to live in at present I could not help 
seeing. The older members of the family found 
occupations by which the domestic burdens were 
lifted a little ; but, with only the three youngest to 
clothe and to keep at school, there was still much 
more outgo than income, and my mother's dis- 
couragement every day increased. 

My eldest brother had gone to sea with a rela- 



BEGINNING TO WORK. 143 

tive who was master of a merchant vessel in the 
South American trade. His inclination led him 
that way ; it seemed to open before him a pros- 
pect of profitable business, and my mother looked 
upon him as her future stay and support. 

One day she came in among us children look- 
ing strangely excited. I heard her tell some one 
afterwards that she had just been to hear Father 
Taylor preach, the sailors' minister, whose com- 
ing to our town must have been a rare occur- 
rence. His words had touched her personally, 
for he had spoken to mothers whose first-born had 
left them to venture upon strange seas and to seek 
unknown lands. He had even given to the wan- 
derer he described the name of her own absent 
son — " Benjamin." As she left the church she 
met a neighbor who informed her that the brig 
"Mexican" had arrived at Salem, in trouble. It 
was the vessel in which my brother had sailed 
only a short time before, expecting to be absent 
for months. " Pirates " was the only word we 
children caught, as she hastened away from the 

I house, not knowing whether her son was alive or 
not. Fortunately, the news hardly reached the 
town before my brother himself did. She met 
him in the street, and brought him home with 

j her, forgetting all her anxieties in her joy at his 
safety. 

The " Mexican " had been attacked on the high 

\ seas by the piratical craft " Panda," robbed of 



144 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

twenty thousand dollars in specie, set on fire, and 
abandoned to her fate, with the crew fastened 
down in the hold. One small skylight had acci- 
dentally been overlooked by the freebooters. The 
captain discovered it, and making his way through 
it to the deck, succeeded in putting out the fire, 
else vessel and sailors would have sunk together, 
and their fate would never have been known. 

Breathlessly we listened whenever my brother 
would relate the story, which he did not at all en- 
joy doing, for a cutlass had been swung over his 
head, and his life threatened by the pirate's boat- 
swain, demanding more money, after all had been 
taken. A Genoese messmate, lachirao, shortened 
to plain " Jack " by the " Mexican's " crew, came 
to see my brother one day, and at the dinner table 
he went through the whole adventure in panto- 
mime, which we children watched with wide-eyed 
terror and amusement. For there was some com- 
edy mixed with what had been so nearly a trag- 
edy, and Jack made us see the very whites of the 
black cook's eyes, who, favored by his color, had 
hidden himself — all except that dilated whiteness 
— between two great casks in the hold. Jack 
himself had fallen through a trap-door, was badly 
hurt, and could not extricate himself. 

It was very ludicrous. Jack crept under the 
table to show us how he and the cook made eyes 
at each other down there in the darkness, not dar- 
ing to speak. The pantomime was necessary, for 



; 



BEGINNING TO WORK. 145 

the Genoese had very little English at his cam- 
mand. 

When the pirate ci-ew were brought into Salem 
for ti'ial, my brother had the questionable satis- 
faction of identifying in the court-room the ruffian 
of a boatswain who had threatened his life. This 
boatswain and several others of the crew were exe- 
cuted in Boston. The boy found his brief sailor- 
experience quite enough for him, and afterward 
settled down quietly to the trade of a carpenter. 

Changes thickened in the air around us. Not 
the least among them was the burning of " our 
meeting-house," in which we had all been bap- 
tized. One Sunday morning we children were 
told, when we woke, that we could not go to 
meeting that day, because the church was a heap 
of smoking ruins. It seemed to me almost like 
the end of the world. 

During my father's life, a few years before my 
birth, his thoughts had been turned towards the 
new manufacturing town growing up on the banks 
of the Merrimack. He had once taken a journey 
there, with the possibility in his mind of making 
the place his home, his limited income furnishing 
no adequate promise of a maintenance for his 
large family of daughters. From the beginning, 
Lowell had a high reputation for good order, mo- 
rality, piety, and all that was dear to the old-fash- 
ioned New Engiander's heart. 

After his death, my mother's thoughts naturally 



146 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

followed the direction his had taken ; and seeing 
no other opening for herself, she sold her small 
estate, and moved to Lowell, with the intention of 
taking a corporation-house for mill-girl boarders. 
Some of the family objected, for the Old World 
traditions about factory life were anything but 
attractive ; and they wei^e current in New England 
until the experiment at Lowell had shown that 
independent and intelligent workers invariably 
give their own character to their occupation. My 
mother had visited Lowell, and she was willing 
and glad, knowing all about the place, to make it 
our home. 

The change involved a great deal of work. 
" Boarders " signified a large house, many beds, 
and an indefinite number of people. Such piles 
of sewing accumulated before us ! A sewing-bee, 
volunteered by the neighbors, reduced the quan- 
tity a little, and our child-fingers had to take their 
part. But the seams of those sheets did look to 
me as if they were miles long ! 

My sister Lida and I had our " stint," — so 
much to do every day. It was warm weather, 
and that made it the more tedious, for we wanted 
to be running about the fields we were so soon to 
leave. One day, in sheer desperation, we dragged 
a sheet up with us into an apj^le-tree in the yard, 
and sat and sewed there through the summer af- 
ternoon, beguiling the irksomeness of our task by 
telling stories and guessing riddles. 



BEGINNING TO WORK. 147 

It was hai'dest for me to leave the garret and 
the o^arden. In the old houses the garret was 
the children's castle. The rough rafters, — it was 
always an unfinished room, otherwise not a true 
garret, — the music of the rain on the roof, the 
worn sea-chests with their miscellaneous treas- 
ures, the blue-roofed cradle that had sheltered 
ten blue-eyed babies, the tape-looms and reels and 
spinning-wheels, the herby smells, and the delight- 
ful dream corners, — these could not be taken with 
us to the new home. AVonderful people had 
looked out upon us from under those garret-eaves. 
Sindbad the Sailor and Baron Munchausen had 
sometimes strayed in and told us their unbeliev- 
able stories ; and we had there made acquaintance 
with the great Caliph Haroun Alraschid. 

To go away from the little garden was almost as 
bad. Its lilacs and peonies were beautiful to me ; 
and in a corner of it was one tiny square of earth 
that I called my own, where I was at liberty to 
pull up my pinks and lady's delights every day, 
to see whether they had taken root, and where I 
\ could give my lazy morning-glory seeds a poke, 
morning after morning, to help them get up and 
begin their climb. Oh, I should miss the garden 
very much indeed I 

It did not take long to turn over the new leaf 
of our home experience. One sunny day three of 
us children, my youngest sister, my brother John, 
and I, took with my mother the first stage-coach 



148 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

journey of our lives, across Lynnfield plains and 
over Andover hills to the banks of the Merrimack. 
We were set down before an empty house in a yet 
unfinished brick block, where we watched for the 
big wagon that was to bring our household goods. 

It came at last ; and the novelty of seeing our 
old furniture settled in new rooms kept us from 
being homesick. One after another they ap- 
peared, — bedsteads, chairs, tables, and, to me most 
welcome of all, the old mahogany secretary with 
brass-handled drawers, that had always stood in 
the " front room " at home. With it came the bar- 
rel full of books that had filled its shelves, and 
they took their places as naturally as if they had 
always lived in this strange town. 

There they all stood again side by side on their 
shelves, the dear, dull, good old volumes that all my 
life I had tried in vain to take a sincere Sabbath- 
day interest in, — Scott's Commentaries on the 
Bible, Hervey's "Meditations," Young's "Night 
Thoughts," " Edwards on the Affections," and 
the Writings of Baxter and Doddridge. Besides 
these, there were bound volumes of the " Reposi- 
tory Tracts," which I had read and re-read ; and 
the delightfully miscellaneous " Evangelicana,'' 
containing an account of Gilbert Tennent's won- 
derful trance ; also the "• History of the Spanish 
Inquisition," with some painfully realistic illus- 
trations ; a German Dictionary, whose outlandish 
letters and words I liked to puzzle myself over ; 



BEGINNING TO WORK. 149 

and a descriptive History of Hamburg, full of 
fine steel engravings — which last two or three 
volumes my father had brought with him from the 
countries to which he had sailed in his sea-faring 
days. A complete set of the " Missionary Her- 
ald," unbound, filled the upper shelves. 

Other familiar articles journeyed with us : the 
brass-headed shovel and tongs, that it had been 
my especial task to keep bright ; the two card- 
tables (which were as unacquainted as ourselves 
with ace, face, and trump) ; the two china mugs, 
with their eighteenth-century lady and gentleman 
figures, curiosities brought from over the sea, 
and reverently laid away by my mother with her 
choicest relics in the secretary-desk ; ray father's 
miniature, painted in Antwerp, a treasure only 
shown occasionally to us children as a holiday 
treat ; and my mother's easy-chair, — I should 
have felt as if I had lost Ae/', had that been left 
behind. The earliest unexpressed ambition of my 
infancy had been to grow up and wear a cap, and 
sit in an easy-chair knitting, and look comforta- 
ble, just as my mother did. 

Filled up with these things, the little one-win- 
dowed sitting-room easily caught the home feel- 
] ing and gave it back to us. Inanimate objects do 
I gather into themselves something of the character 
of those who live among them, through associa- 
tion ; and this alone makes heirlooms valuable. 
They are family treasures, because they are part 



150 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

of the family life, full of memories and inspira- 
tions. Bought or sold, they are nothing but old 
furniture. Nobody can buy the old associations ; 
and nobody who has really felt how everything 
that has been in a home makes part of it, can 
willingly bargain away the old things. 

My mother never thought of disj)osing of her 
best furniture, whatever her need. It traveled 
with her in every change of her abiding-place, as 
long as she lived, so that to us children home 
seemed to accompany her wherever she went. 
And, remaining yet in the family, it often brings 
back to me pleasant reminders of my childhood. 
No other Bible seems quite so sacred to me as the 
Old Family Bible, out of which my father used to 
read when we were all gathered around hun for 
worship. To turn its leaves and look at its pic- 
tures was one of our few Sabbath-day indul- 
gences ; and I cannot touch it now except with 
feelings of profound reverence. 

For the first time in our lives, my little sister 
and I became pupils in a grammar school for 
both girls and boys, taught by a man. I was put 
with her into the sixth class, but was sent the 
very next day into the first. I did not belong in 
either, but somewhere between. And I was very 
uncomfortable in my promotion, for though the 
reading and spelling and grammar and geograr 
phy were perfectly easy, I had never studied any- 
thing but mental arithmetic, and did not know 



BEGINNING TO WORK. 151 

how to "do a sum." We had to show, when 
called up to recite, a slateful of sums, "done " and 
"proved." No explanations were ever asked of 
us. 

The girl who sat next to me saw my distress, 
and offered to do my sums for me. I accepted 
her proposal, feeling, however, that I was a mis- 
erable cheat. But I was afraid of the master, 
who was tall and gaunt, and used to stalk across 
the school-room, right over the desk-tops, to find 
ouf if there was any mischief going on. Once, 
having caught a boy annoying a seat-mate with a 
pin, he punished the offender by pursuing him 
around the school-room, sticking a pin into his 
shoulder whenever he could overtake him. And 
he had a fearful leather strap, which was soms- 
times used even upon the shrinking palm of a 
little girl. If he should find out that I was a 
pretender and deceiver, as I knew that I was, I 
could not guess what might happen to me. He 
never did, however. I was left unmolested in the 
ignorance which I deserved. But I never liked 
the girl who did my sums, and I fancied she had 
a decided contempt for me. 

There was a friendly looking boy always sitting 
at the master's desk ; they called him " the mon- 
itor." It was his place to assist scholars who 
were in trouble about their lessons, but I was too 
bashful to speak to him, or to ask assistance of 
anybody. I think that nobody learned much un- 



152 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

der that regime, and the whole school system was 
soon after entirely reorganized. 

Our house was quickly filled with a large 
feminine family. As a child, the gulf between 
little girlhood and young womanhood had always 
looked to me very wide. I supposed we should 
get across it by some sudden jump, by and by. 
But among these new companions of all ages, 
from fifteen to thirty years, we slipped into wo- 
manhood without knowing when or how. 

Most of my mother's boarders were from New 
Hampshire and Vermont, and there was a fresh, 
breezy sociability about them which made them 
seem almost like a different race of beings fi'ora 
any we children had hitherto known. 

We helped a little about the housework, before 
and after school, making beds, trimming lamps, 
and washing dishes. The heaviest work was done 
by a strong Irish girl, my mother always attend- 
ing to the cooking herself. She was, however, 
a better caterer than the cii'cumstances required 
or permitted. She liked to make nice things for 
the table, and, having been accustomed to an 
abundant supply, could never leai'n to economize. 
At a dollar and a quarter a week for board, 
(the price allowed for mill-girls by the corpora- 
tions) great care in expenditure was necessary. 
It was not in my mother's nature closely to cal- 
culate costs, and in this way there came to be a 
continually increasing leak in the family purse. 



BEGLVNTNG TO WORK. 153 

The older members of the family did everything 
they could, but it was not enough. I heard it 
said one day, in a distressed tone, " The children 
will have to leave school and go into the mill." 

There were many pros and cons between my 
mother and sisters before this was positively de- 
cided. The mill-agent did not want to take us two 
little girls, but consented on condition we should 
be sure to attend school the full number of months 
prescribed each year. I, the younger one, was 
then between eleven and twelve years old. 

I listened to all that was said about it, very 
much fearing that I should not be jDcrmitted to 
do the coveted work. For the feeling had al- 
ready frequently come to me, that I was the one 
too many in the overcrowded family nest. Once, 
before we left our old home, I had heard a 
neighbor condoling with my mother because there 
were so many of us, and her emphatic reply had 
been a great relief to my mind : — 

" There is n't one more than I want. I could 
not spare a single one of my children." 

But her difficulties were increasing, and I 
thought it would be a pleasure to feel that I was 
not a trouble or burden or expense to anybody. 
So I went to my first day's work in the mill 
with a light heart. The novelty of it made it 
seem easy, and it really was not hard, just to 
change the bobbins on the spinning-frames every 
three quarters of an hour or so, with half a 



154 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

dozen otlier little girls who were doing the same 
thing. When I came back at night, the family 
began to pity me for my long, tiresome day's 
work, but I laughed and said, — 

" Why, it is nothing but fun. It is just like 
play." 

And for a little while it was only a new amuse- 
ment ; I liked it better than going to school and 
" making believe " I was learning when I was 
not. And there was a great deal of play mixed 
with it. W^e were not occupied more than half the 
time. The intervals were spent frolicking around 
among the spinning-frames, teasing and talking 
to the older girls, or entertaining ourselves with 
games and stories in a corner, or exploring, with 
the overseer's permission, the mysteries of the 
carding-room, the dressing-room, and the weaving- 
room. 

I never cared much for machinery. The buzz- 
ing and hissing and whizzing of pulleys and roll- 
ers and spindles and flyers around me often grew • 
tiresome. I could not see into their complica- 
tions, or feel interested in them. But in a room 
below us we were sometimes allowed to peer in 
• through a sort of blind door at the great water- 
wheel that carried the works of the whole mill. ■ 
It was so huge that we could only watch a few of I 
its spokes at a time, and part of its dripping rim, i 
moving with a slow, measured strength through, 
the darkness that shut it in. It impressed me 



BEGINNING TO WORK. 155 

with something of the awe which comes to us 
in thinking of the great Power which keeps the 
mechanism of the universe in motion. Even 
now, the remembrance of its large, mysterious 
movement, in which every little motion of every 
noisy little wheel was involved, brings back to me 
a verse from one of my favorite hymns : — 

" Our lives through various scenes are drawn, 
And vexed by trifling' cares, 
While Thine eternal thought moves on 
Thy undisturbed affairs." 

There were compensations for being shut in to 
daily toil so early. The mill itself had its lessons 
for us. But it was not, and could not be, the 
right sort of life for a child, and we were happy 
in the knowledge that, at the longest, our employ- 
ment was only to be temporary. 

When I took my next three months at the 

grammar school, everything there was changed, 

and I too was changed. The teachers were kind, 

and thorough in their instruction ; and my mind 

seemed to have been ploughed up during that 

year of work, so that knowledge took root in it 

easily. It was a great delight to me to study, 

I and at the end of the three months the master 

i told me that I was prepared for the high school. 

\ But alas ! I could not go. The little money I 

I could earn — one dollar a week, besides the price 

of my board — was needed .in the family, and I 

I must return to the mill. It was a severe disap- 



156 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

pointiiient to me, though I did not say so at 1 
home. I did not at all accept the conclusion of 
a neighbor whom I heard talking about it with 
my mother. His daughter was going to the 
high school, and my mother was telling him how 
sorry she was that I could not. 

" Oh," he said, in a soothing tone, " my girl 
has n't got any such head - piece as yours has. 
Your girl does n't need to go." 

Of course I knew that whatever sort of a 
" head-piece " I had, I did need and want just 
that very opportunity to study. I think the reso- 
lution was then formed, inwardly, that I ivould \ 
go to school again, some time, whatever happened. 
I went back to my work, but now without enthu- 
siasm. I had looked through an open door that 
I was not willing to see shut upon me. 

I began to reflect upon life rather seriously i 
for a girl of twelve or thirteen. What was I 
here for ? What could I make of myself ? Must i 
I submit to be carried along with the current, 
and do just what everybody else did ? No : I 
knew I should not do that, for there was a certain 
Myself who was always starting up with her own 
original plan or aspiration before me, and who | 
was quite indifferent as to what people generally j 
thought. 

Well, I would find out what this Myself was 
good for, and that she should be ! 

It was but the presumption of extreme youth. 



BEGINNING TO WORK. 157 

How gladly would I know now, after these long 
years, just why I was sent into the world, and 
whether I have in any degree fulfilled the pur- 
pose of my being ! 

In the older times it was seldom said to little 
girls, as it always has been said to boys, that 
they ought to have some definite plan, while they 
were children, what to be and do when they were 
grown up. There was usually but one path open 
before them, to become good wives and house- 
keepers. And the ambition of most girls was to 
follow their mothers' footsteps in this direction ; 
a natural and laudable ambition. But girls, as 
well as boys, must often have been conscious of 
their own peculiar capabilities, — must have de- 
sired to cultivate and make use of their individual 
powers. When I was growing up, they had al- 
ready begun to be encouraged to do so. We were 
often told that it was our duty to develop any 
talent we might possess, or at least to learn how 
to do some one thing which the world needed, or 
which would make it a pleasanter world. 

When I thought what I should best like to do, 
my first dream — almost a baby's dream — about 
it was that it would be a fine thino- to be a school- 
teacher, like Aunt Hannah. Afterward, when I 
heard that there were artists, I wished I could 
some time be one. A slate and pencil, to draw 
pictures, was my first request whenever a day's 
ailment kept me at home from school ; and I 



158 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

rather enjoyed being a little ill, for the sake of 
amusing myself in that way. The wish grew up 
with me ; but there were no good drawing-teach- 
ers in those days, and if there had been, the cost 
of instruction would have been beyond the family 
means. My sister Emilie, however, who saw my 
taste and shared it herself, did her best to assist 
me, furnishing me with pencil and paper and 
paint-box. 

If I could only make a rose bloom on paper, 
I thought I should be happy ! or if I could at last 
succeed in drawing the outline of winter-stripped 
boughs as I saw them against the sky, it seemed 
to me that I should be willing to spend years in 
trying. I did try a little, and very often. Jack 
Frost was my most inspiring teacher. His sketches 
on the bedroom window-pane in cold mornings 
were my ideal studies of Swiss scenery, crags and 
peaks and chalets and fir-trees, — and graceful 
tracery of ferns, like those that grew in the woods 
where we went huckleberrying, all blended to- 
gether by his touch of enchantment. I wondered 
whether human fingers ever succeeded in imitating 
that lovely work. 

The taste has followed me all my life through, 
but I could never indulge it except as a recreation. 
I was not to be an artist, and I am rather glad 
that I was hindered, for I had even stronger in- 
clinations in other directions; and art, really noble 
art, requires the entire devotion of a lifetime. 



BEGINNING TO WORK. 159 

I seldom thought seriously of becoming an 
author, although it seemed to me that anybody 
who had written a book would have a right to 
feel very proud. But I believed that a person 
must be exceedingly wise, before presuming to 
attempt it : although now and then I thought I 
could feel ideas growing in my mind that it 
might be worth while to put into a book, — if I 
lived and studied until I was forty or fifty years 
old. 

I wrote my little verses, to be sure, but that 
was nothing ; they just grew. They were the 
same as breathing or singing. I could not help 
writing them, and I thought and dreamed a 
great many that never were put on paper. They 
seemed to fly into my mind and away again, like 
birds going with a carol through the air. It 
seemed strange to me that people should notice 
them, or should think my writing verses anything 
peculiar ; for I supposed that they were in every- 
I body's mind, just as they were in mine, and that 
liny body could write them who chose. 
j One day I heard a relative say to my mother, — 
' " Keep what she writes till she grows up, and 
lerhaps she will get money for it. I have heard 
)f somebody who earned a thousand dollars by 
jyriting poetry." 

\ It sounded so absurd to me. Money for writ- 
ing verses ! One dollar would be as ridiculous 
I IS a thousand. I should as soon have thouoht of 



160 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

being paid for thinking ! My mother, fortunately, 
was sensible enough never to flatter me or let me 
be flattered about my scribbling. It never was 
allowed to hinder any work I had to do. I crept 
away into a corner to write what came into my 
head, just as I ran away to J^lay ; and I looked 
upon it only as my most agreeable amusement, 
never thinking of i3reserving anything which did 
not of itself stay in my memory. This too was 
well, for the time did not come when I could 
afford to look upon verse-writing as an occupa- 
tion. Through my life, it has only been permit- 
ted to me as an aside from other more pressing 
employments. Whether I should have written 
better verses had circumstances left me free ti 
do what I chose, it is impossible now to know. '■ 
All my thoughts about ray future sent me bad 
to Aunt Hannah and my first infantile idea o 
beins: a teacher. I foresaw that I should be tha 
before I could be or do anything else. It hac 
been impressed upon me that I must make mysel 
useful in the world, and certainly one could b 
useful who could " keep school " as Aunt Hanna]| 
did. I did not see anything else for a girl t 
do who wanted to use her brains as well as he| i 
hands. So the plan of preparing myself to b 
a teacher gradually and almost unconsciousl 
shaped itself in my mind as the only practicabl 
one. I could earn my living in that way, — a| 
all-important consideration. 



BEGINNING TO WORK. 161 

I liked the thought of self-support, but I would 
have chosen some artistic or beautiful work if I 
could. I had no especial aptitude for teaching, 
and no absorbing wish to be a teacher, but it 
seemed to me that I might succeed if I tried. 
What I did like about it was that one must 
know something first. I must acquire knowledge 
before I could impart it, and that was just Vfhat 
I wanted. I could be a student, wherr^ver I was 
and whatever else I had to be o\' do, and I 
would ! /'' 

I knew I should write ; I coii'ld not help doing 
that, for my hand seemed' instinctively to move 
towards pen and paper in moments of leisure. 
But to write anytKing worth while, I must have 
mental cultivation ; so, in preparing myself to 
teach, I could also be preparing myself to write. 

This was the plan that indefinitely shaped it- 
self in my mind as I returned to ray work in the 
spinning -room, and which I followed out, not 
without many breaks and hindrances and neg- 
lects, during the next six or seven years, — to 
team all I could, so that I should be fit to teach 
<>r to write, as the way opened. And it turned 
put that fifteen or twenty of my best years were 
hiven to teaching. 



VIII. 

BY THE RIVER. 
aCv 

loYd not take us younger ones long to get 
dream of ivith our new home, and to love it. 
came down fide a river had been to me a child's 
the clouds. TLce. Rivers, as I pictured them, 
ows, and graceful \ mountains, and were born in 
their bright mirrors. Oiordered by green mead- 
the only river I had knownd over to gaze into 
on the pages of the " Pilgrimlow tidal creek was 
the Book of Revelation. And tnept as visioned 
like a continuation of that dream, -^ress," and in 

I soon made myself familiar witlrimack was 
nooks along Pawtucket Falls, shaded > 
locks and white birches. Strange new wi^rocky 
ers grew beside the rushing waters, — among tim- 
Sir Walter Scott's own harebells, which I hi- 
never thought of except as blossoms of poetry 
here they were, as real to me as to his Lady i 
the Lake! I loved the harebell, the first ue 
flower the river gave me, as I had never loved i 
flower before. 

There was but one summer holiday for us wh 



BY THE RIVER. 163 

worked in the mills — the Fourth of July. We 
made a point of spending- it out of doors, making 
excursions down the river to watch the meeting 
of the slow Concord and the swift Merrimack ; or 
around by the old canal-jsath, to explore the mys- 
teries of the Guard Locks ; or across the bridge, 
clambering up Dracut Heights, to look away to 
the dim blue mountains. 

On that morning it was our custom to wake one 
another at four o'clock, and start off on a tramp to- 
gether over some retired road whose chief charm 
was its unfamiliarity, returning to a very late 
breakfast, with draggled gowns and aprons full of 
dewy wild roses. No matter if we must get up 
at five the next morning and go back to our hum- 
drum toil, we should have the roses to take with 
us for company, and the sweet air of the wood- 
land which lingered about them would scent our 
thoughts all day, and make us forget the oily 
smell of the machinery. 

We were children still, whether at school or 
at work, and Nature still held us close to her 
motherly heart. Nature came very close to the 
mill-gates, too, in those days. There was green 
grass all around them ; violets and wild gera- 
niums grew by the canals ; and long sti^etches of 
'^ en land between the corporation buildings and 
ae street made the town seem country-like. 

The slope behind our mills (the " Lawrence " 
Mills) was a green lawn ; and in front of some 



164 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

of them the overseers had gay flower-gardens; 
we passed in to our work through a splendor of 
dahlias and hollyhocks. 

The gray stone walls of St. Anne's church and 
rectory made a picturesque sjiot in the middle 
of the town, remaining still as a lasting monu- 
ment to the religious purpose which animated the 
first manufacturers. The church arose close to 
the oldest corporation (the " Merrimack "), and 
seemed a part of it, and a part, also, of the orig- 
inal idea of the place itself, which was always a 
city of worshipers, although it came to be filled 
with a population which preferred meeting-houses 
to churches. I admired the church greatly. I 
had never before seen a real one ; never anything 
but a plain frame meeting-house ; and it and its 
benign, apostolic-looking rector were like a leaf 
out of an English story-book. 

And so, also, was the tiny white cottage nearly 
opposite, set in the middle of a pretty flower-gar- 
den that sloped down to the canal. In the garden 
there was almost always a sweet little girl in a 
pink gown and white sunbonnet gathering flow- 
ers when I passed that way, and I often went out 
of my path to do so. These relieved the mo- 
notony of the shanty-like shops which bordered 
the main street. The town had sprung up with 
a mushroom-rapidity, and there was no attempt 
at veiling the newness of its bricks and mortar, 
its boards and paint. 



BY THE RIVER. 165 

But there were buildings that had their own 
individuality, and asserted it. One of these was 
a mud-cabin with a thatched roof, that looked as 
if it had emigrated bodily from the bogs of Ire- 
land. It had settled itself down into a green 
hollow by the roadside, and it looked as much at 
home with the lilac-tinted crane's-bill and yellow 
buttercups as if it had never lost sight of the 
shamrocks of Erin. 

Now, too, my childish desire to see a real beggar 
was gratified. Straggling petitioners for " cold 
victuals " hung around our back yard, always of 
Hibernian extraction ; and a slice of bread was 
rewarded with a shower of benedictions that lost 
itself upon us in the flood of its own incompre- 
hensible brogue. 

Some time every summer a fleet of canoes would 
glide noiselessly up the river, and a company of 
Penobscot Indians would land at a green point 
almost in sight from our windows. Pawtucket 
Falls had always been one of their favorite camp- 
ing-places. Their strange endeavors to combine 
civilization with savagery were a great source of 
amusement to us ; men and women clad alike in 
loose gowns, stove-pipe hats, and moccasons ; gro- 
tesque relics of aboriginal forest-life. The sight 
of these uncouth-looking red men made the ro- 
mance fade entirely out of the Indian stories we 
had heard. Still their wigwam camp was a show 
we would not willingly have missed. 



166 A NE[V ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

The transition from childhood to girlhood, when 
a little girl has had an almost unlimited freedom 
of out-of-door life, is practically the toning down 
of a mild sort of barbarianism, and is often at- 
tended by a painfully awkward self-consciousness. 
I had an innate dislike of conventionalities. I 
clung to the child's inalienable privilege of run- 
ning half wild ; and when I found that I really 
was growing up, I felt quite rebellious. 

I was as tall as a woman at thirteen, and my 
older sisters insisted upon lengthening my dresses, 
and putting up my mop of hair with a comb. I 
felt injured and almost outraged because my pro- 
testations against this treatment were unheeded; 
and when the transformation in my visible appear- 
ance was effected, I went away by myself and had 
a good cry, which I would not for the world have 
had them know about, as that would have added 
humiliation to my distress. And the greatest pity 
about it was that I too soon became accustomed 
to the situation. I felt like a child, but consid- 
ered it my duty to think and behave like a woman. 
I began to look upon it as a very serious thing to 
live. The untried burden seemed already to have 
touched my shoulders. For a time I was morbidly 
self - critical, and at the same time extremely re- 
served. The associates I chose were usually grave 
young women, ten or fifteen years older than my- 
self ; but I think I felt older and appeared older 
than they did. 



BY THE RIVER. 167 

Childhood, however, is not easily defrauded of 
its birthright, and mine soon reasserted itself. 
At home I was among children of my own age, 
for some cousins and other acquaintances had 
come to live and work with us. We had our 
evening frolics and entertainments together, and 
we always made the most of our brief holiday 
hours. We had also with us now the sister Emi- 
lie of my fairy-tale memories, who had grown into 
a strong, earnest-hearted woman. We all looked 
up to her as our model, and the ideal of our hero- 
ine-worship ; for our deference to her in every 
way did amount to that. 

She watched over us, gave us needed reproof 
and commendation, rarely cosseted us, but rather 
made us laugh at what many would have consid- 
ered the hardships of our lot. She taught us not 
only to accept the circumstances in which we 
found ourselves, but to win from them courage and 
strength. When we came in shivering from our 
work, through a snow-storm, complaining of numb 
hands and feet, she would say cheerily, " But it 
does n't make you any v/armer to say you are 
cold ; " and this was typical of the way she took 
life generally, and tried to have us take it. She 
was constantly denying herself for our sakes, with- 
out making us feel that she was doing so. But she 
did not let us get into the bad habit of pitying 
ourselves because we were not as " well off " as 
many other children. And indeed we considered 



168 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD, 

ourselves pleasantly situated ; but the best of it 
all was that we had her. 

Her theories for herself, and her practice, too, 
were rather severe ; but we tried to follow them, 
according to our weaker abilities. Her custom 
was, for instance, to take a full cold bath every 
morning before she went to her work, even though 
the water was chiefly broken ice ; and we did the 
same whenever we could be resolute enough. It 
required both nerve and will to do this at five 
o'olock on a zero morning, in a room without a 
fire ; but it helped us to harden ourselves, while 
we formed a good habit. The working-day in 
winter began at the very earliest daylight, and 
ended at half-past seven in the evening. 

Another habit of hers was to keep always be- 
side her at her daily work something to study or 
to think about. At first it was " Watts on the 
Improvement of the Mind," arranged as a text- 
book, with questions and answers, by the minis- 
ter of Beverly who had made the thought of the 
millennium such a reality to his people. She 
quite wore this book out, carrying it about with 
her in her working - dress pocket. After that, 
" Locke on the Understanding " was used in the 
same way. She must have known both books 
through and through by heart. Then she read 
Combe and Abercrombie, and discussed their 
physics and metaphysics with our girl boarders, 
some of whom had remarkably acute and well- 



BY THE RIVE It ITl 

balanced minds. Her own seemed to have turner, 
from its early bent toward the romantic, her ttins 
being now for serious and practical, though soi^as 
times abstruse, themes. I remember that Youhe 
and Pollock were her favorite poets. ig 

I could not keep up with her in her studies aiy- 
readings, for many of the books she liked seeme 
to me very dry. I did not easily take to the ar- 
gumentative or moralizing method, which I camc 
to regard as a proof of the weakness of my own 
intellect in comparison with hers. I would gladly 
have kejit pace with her if I could. Any thinly 
under the heading of " Didactick," like some (st 
the pieces in the old " English Reader," used bit 
school-children in the generation just before ours, 
always repelled me. But I thought it neces- 
sary to discipline myself by reading such pieces, 
and my fiist attempt at prose composition, "On 
Friendship," was stiffly modeled after a certain 
" Didactick Essay " in that same English Reader. 

My sister, however, cared more to watch the 
natural development of our minds than to make 
us follow the direction of hers. She was really 
our teacher, although she never assumed that po- 
sition. Certainly I learned more from her about 
my own capabilities, and how I might put them 
to use, than I could have done at any school we 
knew of, had it been possible for me to attend 
one. 

I think she was determined that we should not 



jgg ) A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

ours« ™6ntally defrauded by the circumstances which i 
11 ^d made it necessary for us to begin so early to 
Tjin our daily bread. This remark applies espe- 
g ally to me, as my older sisters (only two or three I 
„„^f them had come to Lowell) soon drifted away 
^„rom us into their own new homes or occupa- 
jj,, Lions, and she and I were left together amid the 
fLwhir of spindles and wheels. 

One thing she planned for us, her younger 
pphousemates, — a dozen or so of cousins, friends, 
^'^md sisters, some attending school, and some at 
^^yvork in the mill, — was a little fortnightly paper, 
^^o be filled with our original contributions, she 
^jherself acting as editor. 

I do not know where she got the idea, unless it 
was from Mrs. Lydia Maria Child's "Juvenile 
Miscellany," which had found its way *i0 us some 
years before, — a most delightful gr.est, and, I 
think, the first magazine prepared for American 
children, who have had so many since then. (I 
have always been glad that I knew that sweet 
woman with the child's heart and the poet's soul, 
in her later years, and could tell her how happy 
she had helped to make my childhood.) Our lit- 
tle sheet was called " The Diving Bell," probably 
from the sea-associations of the name. We kept 
our secrets of authorship very close from every- 
body except the editor, who had to decipher the 
handwriting and copy the pieces. It was, indeed, 
an important part of the fun to guess who wrote 



BY THE RIVER. 171 

particular pieces. After a little while, however, 
our mannerisms betrayed us. One of my cousins 
was known to be the chief story-teller, and I was 
recognized as the leading rhymer among the 
younger contributors ; the editor-sister excelling 
in her versifying, as she did in almost every- 
thing. 

It was a cluster of very conscious-looking lit- 
tle girls that assembled one evening in the attic 
room, chosen on account of its remoteness from 
intruders (for we did not admit even the family 
as a public, the writers themselves were the only 
audience), to listen to the reading of our first 
paper. We took Saturday evening, because that 
was longer than the other work-day evenings, the 
mills being closed earlier. Such guessing and 
wondering and admiring as we had ! But nobody 
would acknowledge her own work, for that would 
have spoiled the pleasure. Only there were cer- 
tain wise hints and maxims that we knew never 
came from any juvenile head among us, and those 
we set down as " editorials." 

Some of the stories contained rather remark- 
able incidents. One, written to illustrate a little 
girl's habit of carelessness about her own spe- 
cial belongings, told of her rising one morning, 
and after hunting around for her shoes half an 
hour or so, finding them in the hook-case, where 
she had accidentally locked them up the night 
before ! 



172 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

To convince myself that I could write some- 
thing besides rhj^mes, I had attempted an essay 
of half a column on a very extensive subject, 
" Mind." It began loftily :— 

" What a noble and beautiful thing is mind ! *' 
and it went on in the same high-flown strain to 
no particular end. But the editor praised it, 
after having declined the verdict of the audience 
that she was its author ; and I felt sufficiently 
flattered by both judgments. 

I wrote more rhymes than anything else, be- 
cause they came more easily. But I always felt 
that the ability to write good prose was far more 
desirable, and it seems so to me still. I will give 
my little girl readers a single specimen of my 
twelve-year-old "Diving Bell" verses, though I 
feel as if I ought to apologize even for that. It 
is on a common subject, " Life like a Rose " : — 

" Childhood 's like a tender hud 

That 's scarce heen formed an hour, 
But which erelong will doubtless be 
A bright and lovely flower. 

' ' And youth is like a full-blown rose 
Which has not known decay ; 
But which must soon, alas ! too soon I 
Wither and fade away. 

"And age is like a withered rose, 
That bends beneath the blast ; 
But though its beauty all is gone, 
Its fragrance yet may last." 



BY THE RIVER. 173 

This, and other verses that I wrote then, serve 
to ilhistrate the cliilcVs usual inclination to look 
forward meditatively, rather than to think and 
write of the simple things that belong to chil- 
dren. 

Our small venture set some of us imagining 
what larger possibilities might be before us in 
the far future. We talked over the things we 
should like to do when we should be women out 
in the active world ; and the author of the shoe- 
story horrified us by declaring that she meant to 
be distinguished when she grew up for some- 
thing, even if it was for something bad I She did 
go so far in a bad way as to plagiarize a long 
poem in a subsequent number of the " Diving 
Bell " ; but the editor found her out, and we all 
thought that a reproof from Emilie was suffi- 
cient punishment. 

I do not know whether it was fortunate or un- 
fortunate for me that I had not, by nature, what 
is called literary ambition. I knew that I had a 
knack at rhyming, and I knew that I enjoyed 
nothing better than to try to put thoughts and 
words together, in any way. But I did it for the 
pleasure of rhyming and writing, indifferent as 
to what might come of it. For any one who could 
take hold of every-day, practical work, and carry 
it on successf ull3% I had a profound respect. To 
be w^hat is called " capable " seemed to me better 
worth wliile than merely to have a taste or talent 



174 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

foi* writing, perhaps because I was conscious of 
my deficiencies in the former respect. But cer- 
tainly the world needs deeds more than it needs 
words. I should never have been willing to be 
only a writer, without using my hands to some 
good purpose besides. 

My sister, however, told me that here was a 
talent which I had no right to neglect, and which 
1 ought to make the most of. I believed in her ; 
I thought she understood me better than I under- 
stood myself ; and it was a comfort to be assured 
that my scribbling was not wholly a waste of time. 
So I used pencil and paper in every spare min- 
ute I could find. 

Our little home-journal went bravely on through 
twelve numbers. Its yellow manuscript pages 
occasionally meet my eyes when I am rummaging 
among my old papers, with the half-conscious look 
of a waif that knows it has no right to its escape 
from the waters of oblivion. 

While it was in progress my sister Emilie be- 
came acquainted with a family of bright girls, 
near neighbors of ours, who proposed that we 
should join with them, and form a little society 
for writing and discussion, to meet fortnightly at 
their house. We met, — I think I was the young- 
est of the group, — prepared a Constitution and 
By-Laws, and named ourselves " The Improve- 
ment Circle." If I remember rightly, my sister 
was our first president. The older ones talked 



BY THE RIVER. 175 

and wrote on many subjects quite above me. I 
was shrinkingly bashful, as lialf-gTown girls usu- 
ally are, but I wrote my little essays and read 
them, and listened to the rest, and enjoyed it all 
exceedingly. Out of this little " Improvement 
Circle " grew the larger one whence issued the 
" Lowell Offering," a year or two later. 

At this time I had learned to do a spinner's 
work, and I obtained permission to tend some 
frames that stood directly in front of the river- 
windows, with only them and the wall behind me, 
extending half the length of the mill, — and one 
young woman beside me, at the farther end of the 
row. She was a sober, mature person, who scarcely 
thought it worth her while to speak often to a 
child like me ; and I was, when with strangers, 
rather a reserved girl ; so I kept myself occu- 
pied with the river, my work, and my thoughts. 
And the river and my thoughts flowed on to- 
gether, the happiest of companions. Like a loi- 
tering pilgrim, it sparkled up to me in recogni- 
tion as it glided along, and bore away my little 
frets and fatigues on its bosom. When the work 
"went well," I sat in the window-seat, and let 
my fancies fly whither they would, — downward 
to the sea, or upward to the hills that hid the 
mountain-cradle of the Merrimack. 

The printed regulations forbade us to bring 
books into the mill, so I made my window-seat 
into a small library of poetry, pasting its side all 



176 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

over with newspaper clippings. In those days we 
had only weekly papers, and they had always a 
" poet's corner," where standard writers were well 
represented, with anonymous ones, also. I was 
not, of course, much of a critic. I chose my 
verses for their sentiment, and because I wanted 
to commit them to memory ; sometimes it was a 
long poem, sometimes a hymn, sometimes only a 
stray verse. Mrs. Hemans sang with me, — 

" Far away, o'er the blue hills far away ; " 
and I learned and loved her " Better Land," and 

" If thou hast crushed a flower," 

and " Kindred Hearts." 

I wonder if Miss Landon really did write that 
fine poem to Mont Blanc which was printed in 
her volume, but which sounds so entirely unlike 
everything else she wrote ! This was one of my 
window-gems. It ended with the appeal, — 

" Alas for thy past mystery ! 

For thine untrodden snow ! 
Nurse of the tempest ! hast thou none 
To guard thine outraged brow ? " 

and it contained a stanza that I often now repeat 
to myself : — 

" We know too much : scroll after scroll 
Weighs down our weary shelves : 
Our only point of ignorance 
Is centred in ourselves." 

There was one anonymous waif in my collec- 
tion that I was \e\-y fond of. I have never seen 
it since, nor ever had the least clue to its au- 



^ 



BY THE RIVER. 177 



thorship. It stirred me and haunted me ; and it 
often comes back to me now, in snatches like 
these : — 

" The human mind ! That lofty thing, 
The palace and the throne 
Where Reason sits, a sceptred king, 
And breathes his judgment-tone ! 

" The human soul ! That startling thing, 
Mysterious and sublime ; 
An angel sleeping on the wing, 
Worn by the scoffs of time. 
From heaven in tears to earth it stole — 
That startling thing, the human soul." 

I was just beginning, in my questionings as to 
the meaning of life, to get glimpses of its true 
definition from the poets, — that it is love, service, 
the sacrifice of self for others' good. The lesson 
was slowly learned, but every hint of it went to 
my heart, and I kept in sight upon my win- 
dow wall reminders like that of holy George Her- 
bert : — 

" Be useful where thou livest, that they may 
Both want and wish thy pleasing presence still. 

— Find out men's wants and will, 
And meet them there. All worldly joys go less 
To the one joy of doing kindnesses ; " 

and that well-known passage from Talfourd, — 

" The blessings which the weak and poor can scatter, 
Have their own season. 
It is a little thing to speak a phrase 
Of common comfort, which, by daily use. 
Has almost lost its sense ; yet on the ear 
Of him who thought to die unmourned 't will fall 
Like choicest music" 



178 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

A very familiar extract from Carlos Wilcox, 
almost the only quotation made nowadays from his 
poems, was often on my sister Emilie's lips, whose 
heart seemed always to be saying to itself : — 

" Pour blessings round thee like a shower of gold ! " 

I had that beside me, too, and I copy part of it 
here, for her sake, and because it v.'ill be good 
for my girl readers to keep in mind one of the 
noblest utterances of an almost forgotten Ameri- 
can poet : — 

" Rouse to some work of high and holy love, 
And thou an angel's happiness shalt know ; 
Shalt bless the earth while in the wofld above. 
The good begun by thee shall onward flow. 
The pure, sweet stream shall deeper, wider grow. 
The seed that in these few and fleeting hours 
Thy hands, unsparing and unwearied sow, 
Shall deck thy grave with amaranthine flowers, 
And yield thee fruits divine in heaven's immortal bowers." 

One great advantage which came to these many 
stranger girls through being brought together, 
away from their own homes, was that it taught 
them to go out of themselves, and enter into the 
lives of others. Home-life, when one always stays 
at home, is necessarily narrowing. That is one 
reason why so many women are petty and un- 
thoughtful of any except their own family's inter- 
ests. We have hardly begun to live until we can 
take in the idea of the whole human family as the 
one to which we truly belong. To me, it was an 
incalculable help to find myself among so many 



^11 



BY THE RIVER. 179 

working-girls, all of us thrown upon our own re- 
sources, but thrown much more upon each others' 
sympathies. 

And the stream beside which we toiled added 
to its own inspii'ations human suggestions drawn 
from our acquaintance with each other. It 
blended itself with the flow of our lives. Almost 
the first of my poeralets in the "Lowell Offer- 
ing " was entitled " The River." These are some 
lines of it : — 

' ' Gently flowed a river bright 
On its path of liquid light, 
Gleaming now soft banks between, 
Winding now through valleys green, 
Cheering with its j)resence mild 
Cultured fields and woodlands wild. 

" Is not such a pure one's life ? 
Ever shunning pride and strife, 
Noiselessly along she goes, 
Known by gentle deeds she does ; 
Often wandering far, to bless, 
And do others kindnesses. 

" Til us, by her own virtues shaded. 
While pure thoughts, like starbeams, lie 
Mirrored in her heart and eye. 
She, content to be unknown, 
All serenely moveth on, 
Till, released from Time's commotion, 
Self is lost in Love's wide ocean." 

There w^as many a 3'oung girl near me whose 
life was like the beautiful course of the river in 
my ideal of her. The Merrimack has blent its 



180 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

music with the onward song of many a lovely 
sovil that, clad in plain working-clothes, moved 
heavenward beside its waters. 

One of the loveliest persons I ever knew was a 
young girl who worked opposite to me in the 
spinning-room. Our eyes made us friends long 
before we spoke to each other. She was an or- 
phan, well-bred and well-educated, about twenty 
years old, and she had brought with her to her 
place of toil the orphan child of her sister, left to 
her as a death-bed legacy. They boarded with a 
relative. The factory boarding-houses were often 
managed by families of genuine refinement, as in 
this case, and the one comfort of Caroline's life 
was her beautiful little niece, to whom she could 
go home when the day's work was over. 

Her bereavements had given an appealing sad- 
ness to her whole expression ; but she had ac- 
cepted them and Jier changed circumstances with 
the submission of profound faith which every- 
body about her felt in everything she said and 
did. I think I first knew, through her, how char- 
acter can teach, without words. To see her and 
her little niece together was almost like looking 
at a picture of the Madonna. Caroline after- 
wards became an inmate of my mother's family, 
and we were warm friends until her death a few 
years ago. 

Some of the girls could not believe that the 
Bible was meant to be counted among forbidden 



BY THE RIVER. 181 

books. We all thought that the Scriptui-es had 
a right to go wherever we went, and that i£ we 
needed them anywhere, it was at our work. I 
evaded the law by carrying some leaves from a 
torn Testament in my pocket. 

The overseer, caring more for law than gos^jel, 
confiscated all he found. He had his desk full of 
Bibles. It sounded oddly to hear him say to the 
most religious girl in the room, when he took 
hers away, " I did think you had more conscience 
than to bring that book here." But we had some 
close ethical questions to settle in those days. It 
was a rigid code of morality under which we 
lived. Nobody complained of it, however, and 
we were doubtless better off for its strictness, in 
the end. 

The last window in the row behind me was 
filled with flourishing house-plants — fragrant- 
leaved geraniums, the overseer's pets. They gave 
that corner a bowery look ; the perfume and 
freshness tempted me there often. Standing be- 
fore that window, I could look across the room 
and see girls moving backwards and forwards 
among the sj)inning-frames, sometimes stooping, 
soriietimes reaching up their arms, as their work 
required, with easy and not ungraceful move- 
mfents. On the whole, it was far from being a 
dijsagreeable j^lace to stay in. The girls were 
bright-looking and neat, and everything was kept 
cltian and shining. The effect of the whole was 
rayther attractive to strangers. 



182 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

My grandfather came to see my mother once at 
about this time and visited the mills. When he 
had. entered our room, and looked around for a 
moment, he took off his hat and made a low bow 
to the girls, first toward the right, and then to- 
ward the left. We were familiar with his courte- 
ous habits, partly due to his French descent ; but 
we had never seen anybody bow to a room full of 
mill girls in that polite way, and some one of the 
family afterwards asked him why he did so. He 
looked a little surprised at the question, but 
answered promptly and with dignity, " I always 
take off my hat to ladies." 

His courtesy was genuine. Still, we did not 
call ourselves ladies. We did not forget that we 
were working-girls, wearing coarse aprons suit- 
able to our work, and that there was some danger 
of our becoming drudges. I know that sometimes 
the confinement of the mill became very weari- 
some to me. In the sweet June weather I would 
lean far out of the window, and try not to hear 
the imceasing clash of sound inside. Looking 
away to the hills, my whole stifled being would 
cry out 

" Oh, that I had wings ! " 

Still I was there from choice, and 

" The prison unto which we doom ourselTes, 
No prison is." i 

And I was every day making discoveries about 
life, and about myself. I had naturally so(aie 



il 



BY THE RIVER. 183 

elements of the recluse, and would never, of my 
own choice, have lived in a crowd. I loved quiet- 
ness. The noise of machinery was particularly dis- 
tasteful to rae. But I found that the crowd was 
made up of single human lives, not one of them 
wholly uninteresting, when separately known. I 
learned also that there are many things which 
belong to the whole world of us together, that 
no one of us, nor any few of us, can claim or 
enjoy for ourselves alone. I discovered, too, that 
I could so accustom myself to the noise that it 
became like a silence to me. And I defied the 
machinery to make me its slave. Its incessant dis- 
cords could not drown the music of my thoughts 
if I would let them fly high enough. Even the 
long hours, the early rising, and the reg^ularity 
enforced by the clangor of the bell were good 
discipline for one who was naturally inclined to 
dally and to dream, and who loved her own per- 
sonal liberty with a willful rebellion against con- 
trol. Perhaps I could have brought myself into 
the limitations of order and method in no other 
way. 

Like a plant that starts up in showers and sun- 
shine and does not know which has best helped 
it to grow, it is difficult to say whether the hard 
things or the pleasant things did me most good. 
But when I was sincerest with myself, as also 
when I thought least about it, I know that I was 
glad to be alive, and to be just where I was. 



184 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

It is a conquest when we can lift ourselves above 
the annoyances of circumstances over which we 
have no conti"ol ; bnt it is a greater victory when 
we can make those circumstances our helpers, — 
when we can appreciate the good there is in them. 
It has often seemed to me as if Life stood beside 
me, looking me in the face, and saying, " Child, 
you must learn to like me in the form in which 
you see me, before I can offer myself to you in 
any other aspect." 

It was so with this disagreeable necessity of 
living among many people. There is nothing 
more miserable than to lose the feeling of our 
own distinctiveness, since that is our only clue to 
the Purpose behind us and the End before us. 
But when we have discovered that human beings 
are not a mere "mass," but an orderly Whole, 
of which we are a part, it is all so different ! 

This we workinof-oirls mijrht have learned from 
the webs of cloth we saw woven around us. Eveiy 
little thread must take its place as warp or woof, 
and keep in it steadily. Left to itself, it would 
be only a loose, useless filament. Trying to wander 
in an independent or a disconnected way among 
the other threads, it would make of the whole 
web an inextricable snarl. Yet each little thread 
must be as firmly spun as if it were the only one, 
or the result would be a worthless fabric. 

That we are entirely separate, while yet we 
entirely belong to the Whole, is a truth that wo 



I 



BY THE RIVER. 185 

learn to rejoice in, as we come to understand 
more and more of ourselves, and of this human 
life of ours, which seems so complicated, and yet 
is so simple. And when we once get a glimpse of 
the Divine Plan in it all, and know that to be just 
where we are, doing just what we are doing just 
at this hour because it is our appointed hour, — 
when we become aware that this is the very best 
thing possible for us in God's universe, the hard 
task grows easy, the tiresome employment wel- 
come and delightful. Having fitted ourselves to 
our present work in such a way as this, we are 
usually prepared for better work, and are sent to 
take a better place. 

Perhaps this is one of the unfailing laws of 
progress in our being. Perhaps the Master of 
Life always rewards those who do their little 
faithfully by giving them some greater oppor- 
tunity for faithfulness. Certainl}-, it is a com- 
fort, wherever we are, to say to ourselves : — 

" Thou earnest not to thy place by accident, 
It is the very place God meant for thee." 



IX. 

MOUNTAIN-FRIENDS. 

The pleasure we found in making new ac- 
quaintances among our workmates arose partly 
from their having come from great distances, re- 
gions unknown to us, as the northern districts of 
Maine and New Hampshire and Vermont were, 
in those days of stage-coach traveling, when rail- 
roads had as yet only connected the larger cities 
with one another. 

It seemed wonderful to me to be talking with 
anybody who had really seen mountains and lived 
among them. One of the younger girls, who 
worked beside me dui*ing my very first days in 
the mill, had come from far up near the sources 
of the Merrimack, and she told me a great deal 
about her home, and about farm-life among the 
hills. I listened almost with awe when she said 
that she lived in a valley where the sun set at four 
o'clock, and where the great snow-storms drifted 
in so that sometimes they did not see a neighbor 
for weeks. 

To have mountain-summits looking down upon 
one out of the clouds, summer and winter, by day 
and by night, seemed to me something both de- 



« 



MOUNTAIN-FRIENDS. 187 

lightful and terrible. And yet here was this girl 
to whom it all appeared like the merest common- 
[ place. What she felt about it was that it was 
" awful cold, sometimes ; the days were so short ! 
and it grew dark so early ! " Then she told me 
about the spinning, and the husking, and the 
sugar-making, while we sat in a corner together, 
1 waiting to replace the full spools by empty ones, 
— the work usually given to the little girls. 

I had a great admiration for this girl, because 
she had come from those wilderness-regions. The 
scent of pine - woods and checkerberry - leaves 
seemed to hang about her. I believe I liked 
her all the better because she said " daown " 
and "haow." It was part of the mountain- 
flavor. 

I tried, on my part, to impress her with stories 
of the sea ; but I did not succeed very well. Her 
principal comment was, " They don't think much 
of sailors up ao7ir way." And I received the im- 
pression, from her and others, and from my own 
imagination, that rural life was far more delight- 
ful than the life of towns. 

But there is something in the place where we 
were born that holds us always by the heart- 
strings. A town that still has a great deal of 
the country in it, one that is rich in beautiful 
scenery and ancestral associations, is almost like 
a living being, with a body and a soul. We 
speak of such a town, if our birthplace, as of a 



188 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

mother, and think o£ ourselves as her sons and 
daughters. 

So we felt, my sisters and I, about our dear 
native town of Beverly. Its miles of sea-border, 
almost every sunny cove and rocky headland of 
which was a part of some near relative's home- 
stead, were only half a day's journey distant ; and 
the misty ocean-spaces beyond still widened out 
on our imagination from the green inland land- 
scape around us. But the hills sometimes shut 
us in, body and soul. To those who have been 
reared by the sea a wide horizon is a necessity, 
both for the mind and for the eye. , 

We had many opportunities of escape towards 
our native shores, for the larger part of our large 
family still remained there, and there was a con- 
stant coming and going among us. The stage- 
driver looked upon us as his especial charge, and f 
we had a sense of personal property in the Salem ( 
and Lowell stage-coach, which had once, like a 
fairy-godmother's coach, rumbled down into our 
own little lane, taken possession of us, and carried' 
us off to a new home. 

My married sisters had families growing ixp 
about them, and they liked to have us younger 
ones come and help take care of their babies. 
One of them sent for me just when the close air 
and long days' work were beginning to tell upon 
my health, and it was decided that I had better 
go. The salt wind soon restored my strength, and 



Ml 



M UNTA IN-FRIENDS. 189 

those months of quiet family life were very good 
for me. 

Like most young girls, I had a motherly fond- 
ness for little children, and my two baby-nephews 
were my pride and delight. The older one had a 
delicate constitution, and there was a thoughtful, 
questioning look in his eyes, that seemed to gaze 
forward almost sadly, and foresee that he should 
never attain to manhood. The younger, a plump, 
vigorous urchin, three or four months old, did, 
without doubt, " feel his life in every limb." He 
was my especial charge, for his brother's clinging 
weakness gave him, the first-born, the place near- 
est his mother's heart. The baby bore the family 
name, mine and his mother's ; " our little Lark," 
we sometimes called him, for his wide-awakeness 
and his merry-heartedness. (Alas ! neither of 
those beautiful boys grew up to be men! One 
page of my home-memories is sadly written over 
with their elegy, the " Graves of a Household." 
Father, mother, and four sons, an entire family, 
long since passed away from earthly sight.) 

The tie between my lovely baby-nephew and 
myself became very close. The first two years of 
a child's life are its most appealing years, and call 
out all the latent tenderness of the nature on 
which it leans for protection. I think I should 
have missed one of the best educating influences 
of my youth, if I had not had the care of that 
baby for a year or more, just as I entered my 



190 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

teens. I was never so happy as when I held him 
in my arms, sleeping or waking ; and he, happy 
anywhere, was always contented when he was 
with me. 

I was as fond as ever of reading, and somehow 
I managed to combine baby and book. Dickens's 
" Old Curiosity Shop " was just then coming out 
in a Philadelphia weekly paper, and I read it 
with the baby playing at my feet, or lying across 
my lap, in an unfinished room given up to sea- 
chests and coffee-bags and spicy foreign odors. 
(My cherub's papa was a sea - captain, usually 
away on his African voyages.) Little Nell and 
her grandfather became as real to me as my 
darling charge, and if a tear from his nurse's eyes 
sometimes dropped upon his cheek as he slept, he 
was not saddened by it. When he awoke he was 
irrepressible ; clutching at my hair with his stout 
pink fists, and driving all dream-people effectually 
out of my head. Like all babies, he was some- 
thing of a tyrant ; but that brief, sweet despotism 
ends only too soon. I put him gratefully down, 
dimpled, chubby, and imperious, upon the list of 
my girlhood's teachers. 

My sister had no domestic help besides mine, 
so I learned a good deal about general house- 
work. A girl's preparation for life was, in those 
days, considered quite imperfect, who had no prac- 
tical knowledge of that kind. We were taught, 
indeed, how to do everything that a woman might 



I 



MOUNTAIN-FRIENDS. 191 

be called upon to do under any circumstances, 
for herself or for the household she lived in. It 
was one of the advantages of the old simple way 
of living, that the yoving daughters of the house 
were, as a matter of course, instructed in all these 
things. They acquired the habit of being ready 
for emergencies, and the family that required no 
outside assistance was delightfully independent. 

A young woman would have been considered 
a very inefficient being who could not make and 
mend and wash and iron her own clothing, and 
get three regular meals and clear them away 
every day, besides keeping the house tidy, and 
doing any other needed neighborly service, such 
as sitting all night by a sick-bed. To be "a good 
watcher " was considered one of the most impor- 
tant of womanly attainments. People who lived 
side by side exchanged such services without wait- 
ing to be asked, and they seemed to be happiest 
of whom such kindnesses were most expected. 

Every kind of work brings its own comj)ensa- 
tions and attractions. I really began to like plain 
sewing ; I enjoyed sitting down for a whole af- 
ternoon of it, fingers flying and thoughts flying 
faster still, — the motion of the hands seeming to 
set the mind astir. Such afternoons used to bring 
me throngs of poetic suggestions, particularly if I 
sat by an open window and could hear the wind 
blowing and a bird or two singing. Nature is 
often very generous in opening her heart to those 



192 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

who must keep their hands employed. Perhaps 
it is because she is always quietly at work herself, 
and so sympathizes with her busy human friends. 
And possibly there is no needful occupation 
which is wholly unbeautif ul. The beauty of work 
depends upon the way we meet it — whether we 
arm ourselves each morning- to attack it as an en- 
emy that must be vanquished before night comes, 
or whether we open our eyes with the sunrise to 
welcome it as an ajiproaching friend who will keep 
us delightful company all day, and who will make 
us feel, at evening, that the day was well worth 
its fatigues. 

I found my practical experience of housekeep- 
ing and baby-tending very useful to me after- 
wards at the West, in my sister Emilie's family, 
when she was disabled by illness. I think, indeed, 
that every item of real knowledge I ever acquired 
has come into use somewhere or somehow in the 
course of the years. But these were not the things 
I had most wished to do. The whole world of 
thought lay unexplored before me, — a world of 
which I had already caught large and temj)ting 
glimj)ses, and I did not like to feel the horizon 
shutting me in, even to so pleasant a corner as 
this. And the worst of it was that I was get- 
ting too easy and contented, too indifferent to the 
higher realities which my work and my thoughtful 
companions had kept keenly clear before me. I 
felt myself slipping into an inward apathy fi'om 



MOUNTAIN-FRIENDS. 193 

which it was hard to rouse myself. I could not 
let it go on so. I must be where my life could 
expand. 

It was hard to leave the dear little fellow I had 
taught to walk and to talk, but I knew he would 
not be inconsolable. So I only said " I must go," 
— and turned my back upon the sea, and my face 
to the banks of the Merrimack. 

When I returned I found that I enjoyed even 
the familiar, lanremitting clatter of the mill, be- 
cause it indicated that something was going on. I 
liked to feel the people around me, even those 
whom I did not know, as a wave may like to feel 
the surrounding waves urging it forward, with or 
against its own will. I felt that I belonged to the 
world, that there was something for me to do in 
it, though I had not yet found out what. Some- 
thing to do ; it might be very little, but still it 
would be my own work. And then there was the 
better something which I had almost forgotten, — 
to he ! Underneath my dull thoughts the -old 
aspirations were smouldering, the old ideals rose 
and beckoned to me through the rekindling light. 

It was always aspiration rather than ambition 
by which I felt myself stirred. I did not care to 
outstrip others, and become what is called " dis- 
tinguished," were that a possibility, so much as 
I longed to answer the Voice that invited, ever re- 
ceding, up to invisible heights, however unattain- 
able they might seem. I was conscious of a desire 



194 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

that others should feel something coming to them 
out of my life like the breath of flowers, the whis- 
per of the winds, the warmth of the sunshine, 
and the depth of the sky. That, I felt, did not 
require great gifts or a fine education. We might 
all be that to each other. And there was no op- 
portunity for vanity or pride in receiving a beau- 
tiful influence, and giving it out again. 

I do not suppose that I definitely thought all 
this, though I find that the verses I wrote for our 
two mill magazines at about this time often ex- 
pressed these and similar longings. They were 
vague, and they were too likely to dissipate them- 
selves in mere dreams. But our aspirations come 
to us from a source far beyond ourselves. Happy 
are they who are " not disobedient unto the heav- 
enly vision " ! 

A girl of sixteen sees the world before her 
through rose-tinted mists, a blending of celestial 
colors and earthly exhalations, and she cannot 
separate their elements, if she would ; they all 
belong to the landscape of her youth. It is the 
mystery of the meeting horizons, — the visible 
beauty seeking to lose and find itself in the In- 
visible. 

In returning to my daily toil among workmates 
from the hill-country, the scenery to which they 
belonged became also a part of my life. They 
brought the mountains with them, a new back- 
ground and a new hope. We shared an uneven 



MOUNTAIN-FRIENDS. 195 

path and homely occupations ; but above us hung 
glorious summits never wholly out of sight. 
Every blossom and every dewdrop at our feet 
was touched with some tint of that far-off splen- 
dor, and every pebble by the wayside was a mes- 
senger from the peak that our feet would stand 
upon by and by. 

The ti'ue climber knows the delight of trusting 
his path, of following it without seeing a step 
before him, or a glimpse of blue sky above him, 
sometimes only knowing that it is the right path 
because it is the only one, and because it leads 
upward. This our daily duty was to us. Though 
we did not always know it, the faithful plodder 
was sure to win the heights. Unconsciously we 
learned the lesson that only by humble Doing 
can any of us win the lofty possibilities of Being. 
For indeed, what we all want to find is not so 
much our place as our path. The path leads to 
the place, and the place, when we have found it, 
is only a clearing by the roadside, an opening 
into another path. 

And no comrades are so dear as those who have 
broken with us a pioneer road which it will be 
safe and good for others to follow ; which will 
furnish a plain clue for all bewildered travelers 
hereafter. There is no more exhilarating human 
experience than this, and perhaps it is the highest 
angelic one. It may be that somg such mutual 
work is to link us forever with one another in the 
Infinite Life. 



196 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

The girls who toiled together at Lowell were 
clearing away a few weeds from the overgrown 
track of independent labor for other women. 
They practically said, by numbering themselves 
among factory girls, that in our country no real 
odium could be attached to any honest toil that 
any self-respecting woman might undertake. 

I regard it as one of the privileges of my youth 
that I was permitted to grow up among those ac- 
tive, interesting girls, whose lives were not mere 
echoes of other lives, but had principle and pur- 
pose distinctly their own. Their vigor of chai'ac- 
ter was a natural development. The New Hamp- 
shire girls who came to Lowell were descendants 
of the sturdy backwoodsmen who settled that 
State scarcely a hundred years before. Their 
grandmothers had suffered the hardships of fron- 
tier life, had known the horrors of savage warfare 
when the beautiful valleys of the Connecticut and 
the jMerrimack were threaded with Indian trails 
from Canada to the white settlements. Those 
young women did justice to their inheritance, ij 
They were earnest and capable ; ready to under- 
take anything that was worth doing. My dreamy, 
indolent nature was shamed into activity among I 
them. They gave me a larger, firmer ideal of| 
womanhood. 

Often during the many summers and autunms 
that of late years I have spent among the NeW; 
Hampshire hills, sometimes far up the mountain 



MOUNTAIN-FRIENDS. 197 

sides, where I could listen to tlie first song of tlie 
little brooks setting out on their journey to join 
the very river that flowed at my feet when I was 
a working-girl on its banks, — the Merrimack, — 
I have felt as if I could also hear the early mu- 
sic of my workmates' lives, those who were born 
among these glorious summits. Pure, strong, crys- 
talline natures carrying down with them the light 
of blue skies and the freshness of free winds to 
their place of toil, broadening and strengthen- 
ing as they went on, who can tell how they have 
refreshed the world, how beautifully they have 
blended their being with the great ocean of re- 
sults ? A brook's life is like the life of a maiden. 
The rivers receive their strength from the rock- 
born rills, from the unfailing jDurity of the moun- 
tain-streams. 

A girl's place in the world is a very strong one : 
it is a pity that she does not always see it so. It 
is strongest through her natural impulse to steady 
herself by leaning upon the Eternal Life, the only 
Reality ; and her weakness comes also from her 
inclination to lean against something, — upon an 
unworthy suppoi't, rather than none at all. She 
often lets her life get broken into fragments 
among the flimsy trellises of fashion and conven- 
tionality, when it might be a perfect thing in the 
upright beaut}^ of its own consecrated freedom. 

Yet girlhood seldom appreciates itself. We 
often hear a girl wishing that she were a boy. 



198 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

That seems so strange ! Gocl made no mistake in 
her creation. He sent her into the woild full of 
power and will to be a helper; and only He 
knows how much his world needs help. She is 
here to make this great house of humanity a hab- 
itable and a beautiful place, without and within, 
— a true home for every one of his children. It 
matters not if she is poor, if she has to toil for 
her daily bread, or even if she is surrounded by 
coarseness and uncongeniality : nothing can de- 
prive her of her natural instinct to help, of her 
birthright as a helper. These very hindrances 
may, with faith and patience, develop in her a 
nobler womanhood. 

No ; let girls be as thankful that they are girls 
as that they are human beings ; for they also, 
according to his own loving plan for them, were 
created in the image of God. Their real power, 
the divine dowry of womanhood, is that of receiv- 
ing and giving inspiration. In this a girl often 
surpasses her brother ; and it is for her to hold 
firmly and faithfully to her holiest instincts, so 
that when he lets his standard droop, she may, 
through her spiritual strength, be a standard- 
bearer for him. Courage and self-reliance are 
now held to be virtues as womanly as they are 
manly ; for the world has grown wise enough to 
see that nothing except a life can really help an- 
other life. It is strange that it should ever have 
held any other theory about woman. 



t 



MOUNTAIN-FRIENDS. 199 

That was a true use of the word " help " that 
grew up so naturally in the rendering and receiv- 
ing of womanly service in the old-fashioned New 
England household. A girl came into a family as 
one of the home-group, to share its burdens, to 
feel that they were her own. The woman who em- 
ployed her, if her nature was at all generous, could 
not feel that money alone was an equivalent for a 
heart's service : she added to it her friendship, her 
gratitude and esteem. The domestic problem can 
never be rightly settled until the old idea of mut- 
ual help is in some way restored. This is a ques- 
tion for girls of the present generation to consider, 
and she who can bring about a practical solution 
of it will win the world's gratitude. 

We used sometimes to see it claimed, in public 
prints, that it would be better for all of us mill- 
girls to be working in families, at domestic service, 
than to be where we were. 

Perhaps the difficulties of modern housekeepers 
did begin with the opening of the Lowell factories. 
Country girls were naturally independent, and 
the feeling that at this new work the few hours 
they had of every-day leisure were entirely their 
own was a satisfaction to them. They preferred 
it to going out as " hired help." It was like a 
young man's pleasure in entering upon business 
for himself. Girls had never tried that experi- 
ment before, and they liked it. It brought out in 
them a dormant strength of character which the 



200 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

world did not previously see, but now fully ac- 
knowledg-es. Of course tliey had a right to con- 
tinue at that freer kind of work as long as they 
chose, although their doing so increased the per- 
plexities of the housekeeping problem for them- 
selves even, since many of them were to become, 
and did become, American house-mistresses. 

It would be a step towards the settlement of 
this vexed and vexing question if girls would de- 
cline to classify each other by their occupations, 
which among us are usually only temporary, and 
are continually shifting from one pair of hands to 
another. Changes of fortune come so abruptly 
that the millionaire's daughter of to- day may be 
glad to earn her living by sewing or sweeping to- 
morrow. 

It is the first duty of every woman to recog- 
nize the mutual bond of universal womanhood. 
Let her ask herself whether she would like to 
hear herself or her sister spoken of as a shop- 
girl, or a factory-girl, or a servant-girl, if neces- 
sity had compelled her for a time to be employed 
in either of the ways indicated. If she would 
shrink from it a little, then she is a little inhu- 
man when she puts her unknown human sisters 
who are so occupied into a class by themselves, 
feeling herself to be somewhat their superior. 
She is really the superior jierson who has accepted 
her work and is doing it faithfully, whatever it is. 
This designating others by their casual employ- 



K 



MOUNTAIN-FRIENDS. 201 

ments pi'events one from making real distinctions, 
from knowing persons as persons. A false stand- 
ard is set up in the minds of those who classify 
and of those who are classified. 

Perhaps it is chiefly the fault of ladies them- 
selves that the word " lady " has nearly lost its 
original meaning (a noble one) indicating sympa- 
thy and service ; — bread-giver to those who are in 
need. The idea that it means something external 
in dress or circumstances has been too generally 
adopted by rich and poor ; and this, coupled with 
the sweeping notion that in our country one per- 
son is just as good as another, has led to ridic- 
ulous results, like that of saleswomen calling 
themselves " salesladies." I have even heard a 
chambermaid at a hotel introduce herself to guests 
as " the chamberlady." 

I do not believe that any Lowell mill-girl was 
ever absurd enough to wish to be known as a 
" factory -lady," although most of them knew that 
" factory-girl " did not represent a high type of 
womanhood in the Old World. But they them- 
selves belonged to the New World, not to the 
Old ; and they were making their own traditions, 
to hand down to their Kepublican descendants, — 
one of which was and is that honest work has no 
need to assert itself or to humble itself in a na- 
tion like oui's, but simply to take its place as one 
of the foundation-stones of the Republic. 

The young women who worked at Lowell had 



202 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

the advantage of living in a community where 
character alone commanded respect. They never, 
at their work or away from it, heard themselves 
contemptuously spoken of on account of their oc- 
cupation, except by the ignorant or weak-minded, 
whose comments they were of course too sensible 
to heed. 

We may as well acknowledge that one of the 
unworthy tendencies of womankind is towards 
petty estimates of other women. This classifying 
habit illustrates the fact. If we must classify our 
sisters, let us broaden ourselves by making large 
classifications. We might all place ourselves in 
one of two ranks — the women who do something, 
and the women who do nothing ; the first being of 
course the only creditable place to occupy. And 
if we would escape from our pettinesses, as we all 
may and should, the way to do it is to find the 
key to other lives, and live in their largeness, by 
sharing their outlook upon life. Even poorer 
people's windows will give us a new horizon, and 
often a far broader one than our own. 



X. 

MILL-GIELS' MAGAZINES. 

There was a passage from Cowper that my 
sister used to quote to us, because, she said, she 
often repeated it to herself, and found that it did 
her good : — 

" In such a world, so thorny, and where none 
Finds happiness unblighted, or if found, 
Without some thistly sorrow at its side, 
It seems the part of wisdom, and no sin 
Against the law of love, to measure lots 
With less distinguished than ourselves, that thii3 
We may with patience bear our moderate lils, 
And sympathize with others, suffering- more." 

I think she made us feel — she certainly made 
rae feel — that our lot was in many ways an un- 
usually fortunate one, and full of responsibilities. 
She herself was always thinking what she could 
do for others, not only innnediately about her, but 
in the farthest corners of the earth. She had her 
Sabbath-school class, and visited all the children 
in it ; she sat up all night, very often, watching 
by a sick girl's bed, in the hospital or in some dis- 
tant boarding-house ; she gave money to send to 
missionaries, or to help build new churches in the 
city, when she was earning only eight or ten dol- 



204 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

lai's a month clear of her board, and could afford 
herself but one " best dress," besides her working 
clothes. That best dress was often nothing but a 
Merrimack print. But she insisted that it was a 
great saving of trouble to have just this one, be- 
cause she was not obliged to think what she should 
wear if she were invited out to spend an evening. 
And she kept track of all the great philanthropic 
movements of the day. She felt deeply the shame 
and wrong of American slavery, and tried to 
make her workmates see and feel it too. (Peti- 
tions to Congress for the abolition of slavery iu 
the District of Columbia were circulated nearly 
every year among the mill-girls, and received 
thousands of signatures.) 

Yv'heiicver she was not occupied with her work 
or her reading, or with looking after us younger 
ones, — two or three hours a day was all the time 
she could call her own, — she was sure to be away 
on some errand of friendliness or mercy. 

Those who do most for others are always those 
who are called upon continually to do a little 
more, and who find a way to do it. People go 
to them as to a bank that never fails. And 
surely, they who have an abundance of life in 
themselves and who give their life out freely to 
others are the only really rich. 

Two dollars a week sounds very small, but in 
Emilie's hands it went farther than many a 
princely fortune of to-day, because she managed 



MILL-GIRLS' MAGAZINES. 205 

with it to make so many people happy. But then 
she wanted absolutely nothing for herself ; noth- 
ing but the privilege of helping others. 

I seem to be eulogizing my sister, though I am 
simply relating matters of fact. I could not, 
however, illustrate my own early experience, ex- 
cept by the lives around me which most influ- 
enced mine. And it was true that our smaller 
and more self-centred natures in touching heis 
caught something of her spirit, the contagion of 
her warm heart and healthy energy. For health 
is more contagious than disease, and lives that 
exhale sweetness around them from the inner 
heaven of their souls keep the world wholesome. 

I tried to follow her in my faltering way, and 
was gratified when she would send me to look up 
one of her stray children, or would let me watch 
with her at night by a sick-bed. I think it was 
partly for the sake of keeping as close to her as I 
could — though not without a sincere desire to 
consecrate myself to the Best — that I became, 
at about thirteen, a member of the church which 
we attended. 

Our minister was a scholarly man, of refined 
tastes and a sensitive organization, fervently spir- 
itual, and earnestly devoted to his work. It was 
an education to grow up under his influence. I 
shall never forget the effect left by the tones of 
his voice when he first spoke to me, a child of 
ten years, at a neighborhood prayer-meeting in 



206 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

my mother's sitting-room. He liad been inviting 
his listeners to the friendship of Christ, and turnj 
ing to my little sister and me, he said, — 

" And these little children, too ; won't the] 
come ? " 

The words, and his manner of saying them,^ 
brought the tears to my eyes. Once only before, 
far back in my earlier childhood — I have already 
mentioned the incident — had I heard that Name 
spoken so tenderly and familiarly, yet so rever- 
ently. It was as if he had been gazing into the 
face of an invisible Friend, and had just turned 
from Him to look into ours, while he gave us his 
message, that He loved us. 

In that moment I again caught a glimpse of 
One whom I had always known, but had often 
forgotten, — One who claimed me as his Father's 
child, and would never let me go. It was a real 
Face that I saw, a real Voice that I heard, a real 
Person who was calling me. I could not mistake 
the Presence that had so often drawn near me 
and shone with sunlike eyes into my soul. The 
words, " Lord, lift Thou up the light of thy coun- 
tenance upon us ! " had always given me the feel- 
ing that a beautiful sunrise does. It is indeed 
a sunrise text, for is not He the Light of the 
AVorld? 

And peaceful sunshine seemed pouring in at 
the windows of my life on the day when I stood 
in the aisle before the pulpit with a group, who, 



MILL-GIRLS' MAGAZINES. 207 

though young", were all much older than myself, 
and took with them the vows that bound us to 
his service. Of what was then said and read I 
scarcely remember more than the words of heav- 
enly welcome in the Epistle, "Now therefore ye 
are no more strangers and foreigners." It was 
like coming home, like stepping a little farther 
beyond the threshold in at the open door of our 
Father's house. 

Perhaps I was too young to assume those vows. 
Had I deferred it a few years there would have 
been serious intellectual hindrances. But it was 
not the Articles of Faith I was thinking of, al- 
though there was a long list of them, to which we 
all bowed assent, as was the custom. It was 
the home-coming to the " house not made with 
hands," the gladness of signifying that I belonged 
to God's spiritual family, and was being drawn 
closer to his heart, with whom none of us are 
held as " strangers and foreigners." 

I felt that I was taking up again the clue which 
had been put into my childish hand at baptism, 
and was being led on by it into the unfolding 
mysteries of life. Should I ever let it slip from 
me, and lose the way to the " many mansions " 
that now seemed so open and so near? I could 
not think so. It is well that we cannot foresee 
our falterings and failures. At least I could never 
forget that I had once felt my own and other lives 
bound together with the Eternal Life by an invis- 
ible thread. 



208 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

The vague, fitful desire I had felt from my 
cliildliood to be something to the world I lived 
in, to give it something of the inexpressible sweet- 
ness that often seemed pouring through me, I 
knew not whence, now began to shape itself into 
a definite outreach towards the Source of all spir- 
itual life. To draw near to the One All-Beauti- 
ful Being, Christ, to know Him as our spii'its may 
know The Spirit, to receive the breath of his in- 
finitely loving Life into mine, that I might breathe 
out that fragrance again into the lives around me, 

— this was the longing wish that, half hidden 
from myself, lay deep beneath all other desires 
of my soul. This was what religion grew to 
mean to me, what it is still growing to mean, more 
simply and more clearly as the years go on. 

The heart must be very liumble to which this 
heavenly approach is permitted. It knows that 
it has nothing in itself, nothing for others, which 
it has not received. The loving Voice of Him 
who gives his friends his errands to do whis- 
pers through them constantly, " Ye are not your 
own." 

There may be those who would think my nar- 
rative more entertaining, if I omitted these inner 
experiences, and related only lighter incidents. 
But one thing I was aware of, from the time I 
began to think and to wonder about my own life, 

— that what I felt and thought was far more real 
to me than the things that happened. 




MILL-GIRLS' MAGAZINES. 209 

Circumstances are only the keys that unlock 
for us the secret of ourselves ; and I learned very 
early that though there is much to enjoy in this 
beautiful outside world, there is much more to 
love, to believe in, and to seek, in the invisible 
v/orld out of which it all grows. What has best 
revealed our true selves to ourselves must be 
most helpful to others, and one can willingly 
sacrifice some natural reserves to such an end. 
Besides, if we tell our own story at all, we nat- 
urally wish to tell the truest part of it. 

Work, study, and worship were interblended in 
our life. The church was really the home-centre 
to many, perhaps to most of us ; and it was one 
of the mill regulations that everybody should go 
to church somewhere. There must have been an 
earnest group of ministers at Lowell, since nearly 
all the girls attended public worship from choice. 

Our minister joined us in our social gather- 
ings, often inviting us to his own house, visiting 
us at our work, accompanying us on our picnics 
down the river-bank, — a walk of a mile or so took 
us into charmingly picturesque scenery, and we 
always walked, — suggesting books for our read- 
ing, and assisting ns in our studies. 

The two magazines published by the mill-girls, 
the " Lowell Offering " and the " Operatives' 
Magazine," originated with literary meetings in 
the vestry of two religious societies, the first in 
the Universallst Church, the second in the First 



210 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

Congregational, to which my sister and I be- 
longed. 

On account of our belonging there, our con- 
tributions were given to the "Operatives' Maga- 
zine," the first periodical for which I ever wrote, 
issued by the literary society of which our min- 
ister took charge. He met us on regular even- 
ings, read aloud our poems and sketches, and 
made such critical suefsrestions as he thouaht de- 
sirable. This magazine was edited by two young 
women, both of whom had been employed in the 
mills, although at that time they were teachers in 
the public schools — a change which was often 
made by mill-girls after a few months' residence 
at Lowell. A great many of them were district- 
school teachers at their homes in the summer, 
spending only the winters at their work. 

The two magazines went on side by side for a 
year or two, and then were united in the " Lowell 
Offering," which had made the first experiment 
of the kind by publishing a trial number or two 
at irregular intervals. My sister had sent some 
verses of mine, on request, to be published in one 
of those specimen numbers. But we were not 
acquainted with the editor of the " Offering," 
and we knew only a few of its contributors. The 
Universalist Church, in the vestry of which they 
met, was in a distant part of the city. Socially, 
the place where we worshiped was the place where , 
we naturally came together in other ways. The 



MILL-GIRLS' MAGAZINES. 211 

churches were all filled to overflowing, so that the 
grouping together of the girls by their denomi- 
national i^references was almost unavoidable. It 
was in some such way as this that two magazines 
wei'e started instead of one. If the girls who en- 
joyed writing had not been so many and so scat- 
tered, they might have made the better arrange- 
ment of joining their forces from the beginning. 

I was too young a contributor to be at first of 
much value to either periodical. They began 
their regular issues, I think, while I was the 
nursemaid of my little nephews at Beverly. When 
I returned to Lowell, at about sixteen, I found 
my sister Emilie interested in the " Operatives' 
Magazine," and we both contributed to it regu- 
larly, until it was merged in the " Lowell Offer- 
ing," to which we then transferred our writing- 
efforts. It did not occur to us to call these efforts 
" literary." I know that I wrote just as I did for 
our little " Diving Bell," — as a sort of pastime, 
and because my daily toil was mechanical, and fur- 
nished no occupation for my thoughts. Perhaps 
the fact that most of us wrote in this way ac- 
counted for the rather sketchy and fragmentaiy 
character of our " Magazine." It gave evidence 
that we thought, and that we thought upon solid 
and serious matters ; but the criticism of one of 
our superintendents upon it, very kindly given, 
was undoubtedly just : " It has plenty of pith, 
but it lacks point." 



212 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

The " Offering " had always more of the lit- 
erary spirit and touch. It was, indeed, for the 
first two years, edited by a gentleman of acknowl- 
edged literary ability. But people seemed to be 
more interested in it after it passed entirely into 
the hands of the girls themselves. 

The " Operatives' Magazine " had a decidedly 
religious tone. We who wrote for it were loyal 
to our Puritanic antecedents, and considered it 
all-important that our lightest actions should be 
moved by some earnest impulse from behind. We 
might write playfully, but there must be con- 
science and reverence somewhere within it all. 
We had been taught, and we believed, that idle 
words were a sin, whether spoken or written. 
This, no doubt, gave us a gravity of exjDression 
rather unnatural to youth. 

In looking over the bound volume of this mag- 
azine, I am amused at the grown - up style of 
thought assumed by myself, probably its very 
youngest contributor. I wrote a dissertation on 
" Fame," quoting fi-om Pollok, Cowper, and Mil- 
ton, and ending with Diedrich Knickerbocker's 
definition of immortal fame, — " Half a page of 
dirty paper." For other titles I had " Thoughts 
on Beauty ; " " Gentility ; " " Sympathy," etc. 
And in one longish poem, entitled " My Child- 
hood " (written when I was about fifteen), I find 
verses like these, which would seem to have come 
out of a mature experience : — 



J 



MILL-GIRLS' MAGAZINES. 213 

My childhood ! those pleasant days, when everything seemed 

free, 
And in the broad and verdant fields I frolicked merrily ; 
When joy came to my bounding heart with every wild bird's 

song. 
And Nature's music in my ears was ringing all day long ! 

And yet I Avould not call them back, those blessed times of 

yore, 
For riper years are fraught with joys I dreamed not of before. 
The labyrinth of Science opes with wonders every day ; 
And friendship hath full many a flower to cheer life's dreary 

way. 

And glancing" through the pages of the " Low- 
ell Offering " a year or two later, I see that I 
continued to dismalize myself at times, quite un- 
necessarily. The title of one string of morbid 
verses is " The Complaint of a Nobody," in which 
I compare myself to a weed growing up in a gar- 
den; and the conclusion of it all is this stanza: — 

When the fierce storms are raging, I will not repine, 
Though I 'm heedlessly crushed in the strife ; 

For surely 'twere better oblivion were mine 
Than a worthless, inglorious life. 

Now I do not suppose that I really considered 
myself a weed, though I did sometimes fancy that 
a different kind of cultivation would tend to make 
me a more useful plant. I am glad to remember 
that these discontented fits were only occasional, 
for certainly they were unreasonable. I was not 
unhappy ; this was an affectation of unhappiness ; 
and half conscious that it was, I hid it behind a 
different signature from my usual one. 



214 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

How truly Wordsworth desci'ibes this phase of 
undeveloped feeling : — 

' ' In youth sad fancies we affect, 
In luxury of disrespect 
To our own prodigal excess 
Of too familiar happiness." 

It is a very youthful weakness to exaggerate 
passing moods into deep experiences, and if we 
put them down on paper, we get a fine oppor- 
tunity of laughing at ourselves, if we live* to out- 
grow them, as most of us do. I think I must have 
had a frequent fancy that I was not long for this 
world. Perhaps I thought an early death rather 
picturesque ; many young people do. There is a 
certain kind of poetry that fosters this ideal ; that 
delights in imaginary youthful victims, and has, 
reciprocally, its youthful devotees. One of my 
blank verse poems in the " Offering " is entitled 
" The Early Doomed." It begins, — 

And must I die ? The world is bright to me, 
And everything that looks upon me, smiles. 

Another poem is headed " Memento Mori ; " 
and another, entitled a " Song in June," which 
ought to be cheerful, goes off into the doleful 
request to somebody, or anybody, to 

Weave me a shroud in the month of June ! 

I was, perhaps, healthier than the average girl, 
and had no predisposition to a premature decline ; 
and in reviewing these absurdities of my pen, I 
feel like saying to any young girl who inclines to 



MILL-GIRLS' MAGAZINES. 215 

rhyme, " Don't sentimentalize ! Write more o£ 
what you see than of what you feel, and let your 
feelings realize themselves to others in the shape of 
worthy actions. Then they will be natural, and 
will furnish you with something worth writing." 

It is fair to myself to explain, however, that 
many of these verses of mine were written chiefly 
as exercises in rhythmic expression. I remember 
this distinctly about one of my poems with a ter- 
rible title, — " The Murderer's Request," — in 
which I made an imaginary criminal pose for me, 
telling where he wou.ld not and where he would 
like to be buried. I modeled my verses, — 

* ' Bury ye me on some storm-rifted mountain, 

O'erhanging the depths of a yawning abyss," — 

upon Byron's, — 

" Know ye the laud where the cypress and myrtle 

Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime ; " 

and I was only trying to see how near I could ap- 
proach to his exquisite metre. I do not think I 
felt at all murderous in writing it ; but a more 
innocent subject would have been in better taste, 
and would have met the exigencies of the dactyl 
quite as well. 

It is also only fair to myself to say that my 
rhyming was usually of a more wholesome kind. 
I loved Nature as I knew her, — in our stern, 
blustering, stimulating New England, — and I 
chanted the praises of Winter, of snow-storms, and 



216 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

of March winds (I always took pride in my birth 
month, March), with hearty delight. 

Flowers had begun to bring me messages from 
their own world when I was a veiy small child, 
and they never withdrew their companionship 
from my thoughts, for there came summers when 
I could only look out of the mill window and 
dream about them. 

I had one pet window plant of my own, a red 
rose-bush, almost a perpetual bloomer, that I kept 
beside me at my work for jea.YS. 1 parted with 
it only when I went away to the West, and then 
with regret, for it had been to me like a human 
little friend. But the wild flowers had my heart. 
I lived and breathed with them, out under the 
free winds of heaven ; and when I could not see 
them, I wrote about them. Much that I contrib- 
uted to those mill-magazine pages, they suggested, 
— my mute teachers, comforters, and inspirers. 
It seems to me that any one who does not care for 
wild flowers misses half the sweetness of this 
mortal life. 

Horace Smith's " Hymn to the Flowers " was a 
continual delight to me, after I made its acquaint- 
ance. It seemed as if all the wild blossoms of the 
woods had wandered in and were twining them- 
selves around the whirring spindles, as I repeated 
it, verse after verse. Better still, they drew me 
out, in fancy, to their own forest-haunts under 
" cloistered boughs," where eaph swinging "flo- 



mi 



MILL-GIRLS' MAGAZINES. 217 

ral bell " was ringing " a call to prayer," and 
making " Sabbath in the fields." 

Bryant's " Forest Hymn " did me an equally 
beautiful service. I knew every word of it. It 
seemed to me that Bryant understood the very 
heart and soul of the flowers as hardly anybody 
else did. He made me feel as if they were really 
related to us human beings. In fancy my feet 
pressed the turf where they grew, and I knew 
them as my little sisters, while my thoughts 
touched them, one by one, saying with him, — 

" That delicate forest-flower, 
With scented breath, and look so like a smile, 
Seems, as it issiies from the shapeless mould, 
An emanation of the indwelling- Life, 
A visible token of the upholdinjy Love, 
That are the soul of this wide universe." 

I suppose that most of my readers will scarcely 
be older than I was when I wrote my sermonish 
little poems under the inspiration of the flowers 
at my factory work, and perhaps they will be in- 
terested in reading a specimen or two from the 
"Lowell Offering:" — 

LIVE LIKE THE FLO'VVERS. 
Cheerfully wave they o'er valley and mouiatain, 
Gladden the desert, and smile by the fountain ; 
Pale discontent in no young blossom lowers : — 
Live like the flowers ! 

Meekly their buds in the heavy rain bending. 
Softly their hues with the mellow light blending, 
Gratefully welcoming sunlight and showers : — 
Live like the flowers ! 



218 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

Freely their sweets on the wild breezes flinging, 
While in their depths are new odors upspringing : — 
(Blessedness twofold of Love's holy dowers,) 
Live like the flowers ! 

Gladly they heed Who their brightness has given : 
Blooming on earth, look they all up to heaven ; 
Humbly look up from their loveliest bowers : — 
Live like the flowers ! 

Peacefully droop they when autumn is sighing ; 
Breathing mild fragrance around them in dying, 
Sleep they in hope of Spring's freshening hours : — 
Die like the flowers ! 

The prose-poem that follows was put into a 
rhymed version by several unknown hands in 
periodicals of that day, so that at last I also wrote 
one, in self-defense, to claim my own waif. But 
it was a prose-poem that I intended it to be, and 
I think it is better so. 

"BRING BACK MY FLOWERS." 
On the bank of a rivulet sat a rosy child. Her lap 
was filled with flowers, and a garland of rose-buds was 
twined around her neck. Her face was as radiant as the 
sunshine that fell upon it, and her voice was as clear as 
that of the bird which wai-bled at her side. 

The little stream went singing on, and with every 
gush of its music the child lifted a flower in her dim- 
pled hand, and, with a merry laugh, threw it upon the 
water. In her" glee she forgot that her treasures were 
growing less, and with the swift motion of childhood, 
she flung them upon the sparkling tide, until every bud 
and blossom had disappeared. 



MILL-GIRLS' MAGAZINES. 219 

Then, seeing her loss, she sprang to her feet, and 
bursting into tears, called aloud to the stream, " Bring 
back my flowers ! " But the stream danced along, re- 
gardless of her sorrow ; and as it bore the blooming 
burden away, her words came back in a taunting echo, 
along its reedy margin. And long after, amid the 
wailing of the breeze and the fitful bursts of childish 
grief, was heard the fruitless cry, " Bring back my 
flowers ! " 

Meny maiden, who art idly wasting the precious 
moments so bountifully bestowed upon thee, see in the 
thoughtless child an emblem of thyself ! Each mo- 
ment is a perfumed flower. Let its fragrance be dif- 
fused in blessings around thee, and ascend as sweet in- 
cense to the beneficent Giver ! 

Else, when thou hast carelessly flung them from thee, 
and seest them receding on the swift waters of Time, 
thou wilt cry, in tones more sorrowful than those of the 
weeping child, " Bring back my flowers ! " And thy 
only answer will be an echo from the shadowy Past, — 
" Bring back my flowers ! " 

lu the above, a reminiscence of my German 
studies comes back to me. I was an admirer of 
Jean Paul, and one of my earliest attempts at 
translation was his " New Year's Night of an Un- 
happy Man," with its yet haunting glimpse of "" a 
fair long paradise beyond the mountains." I am 
not sure but the idea of trying my hand at a 
" prose-poem " came to me from Eichter, though 
it may have been from Herder or Krummacher, 
whom I also enjoyed and attempted to translate. 



220 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

I have a manuscript-book still, tilled with these 
youthful efforts. I even undertook to put Ger- 
man verse into English verse, not wincing at the 
greatest — Goethe and Schiller. These studies 
were pursued in the pleasant days of cloth-room 
leisure, when my work claimed me only seven 
or eight hours in a day. 

I suppose I should have tried to write, — per- 
haps I could not very well have helped attempting 
it, — under any circumstances. My early efforts 
would not, probably, have found their way into 
print, however, but for the coincident publication 
of the two mill-girls' magazines, just as I entered 
my teens. I fancy that almost everything any 
of us offered them was published, though I never 
was let in to editorial secrets. The editors of 
both magazines were my seniors, and I felt greatly 
honored by their approval of my contributions. 

One of the " Offering " editors was a Unitarian 
clergyman's daughter, and had received an excel- 
lent education. The other was a remarkably bril- 
liant and original young woman, who wrote novels 
that were published by the Harpers of New York 
while she was employed at Lowell. The two had 
rooms together for a time, where the members 
of the " Imju'ovement Circle," chiefly composed 
of " Offering " writers, were hospitably received. 

The " Operatives' Magazine " and the " Lowell 
Offering" were united in the year 1842, under the 
title of the " Lowell Offering and Magazine." 



MILL-GIRLS' MAGAZINES. 221 

(And — to coi-rect a mistake which has crept 
into print — I will say that I never attained the 
honor of being editor of either of these maga- 
zines. I was only one of their youngest contribu- 
tors. The " Lowell Offering " closed its existence 
when Iwas a little more than twenty years old. 
The only continuous editing I have ever been en- 
gaged in was upon " Our Young Folks." About 
twenty years ago I was editor-in-charge of that 
magazine for a year or more, and I had previ- 
ously been its assistant-editor from its beginning. 
These explanatoiy items, however, do not quite 
belong to my narrative, and I return to our maga- 
zines.) 

We did not receive much criticism ; perhaps it 
would have been better for us if we had. But 
then we did not set ourselves up to be literary ; 
though we enjoyed the freedom of writing what 
we pleased, and seeing how it looked in print. It 
was good practice for us, and that was all that 
we desired. We were complimented and quoted. 
When a Philadelphia paper copied one of my little 
poems, suggesting some verbal improvements, and 
predicting recognition for me in the future, I felt 
for the first time that there might be such a thing 
as public opinion worth caring for, in addition to 
doing one's best for its own sake. 

Fame, indeed, never had much attraction for 
me, except as it took the form of friendly recog- 
nition and the sympathetic approval of worthy 



222 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

judges. I wished to do good and true things, but 
not such as would subject me to the stare of coldly 
curious eyes. I could never imagine a girl's feel- 
ing any pleasure in placing herself " before the 
public." The privilege of seclusion must be the 
last one a woman can willingly sacrifice. 

And, indeed, what we wrote was not remarka- 
ble, — perhaps no more so than the usual school 
compositions of intelligent girls. It would hardly 
be worth while to refer to it particularly, had 
not the Lowell girls and their magazines been so 
frequently spoken of as something phenomenal. 
But it was a perfectly natural outgrowth of those 
girls' previous life. For what were we? Girls 
who were working in a factory for the time, to be 
sure ; but none of us had the least idea of con- 
tinuing at that kind of work permanently. Our 
composite photograph, had it been taken, would 
have been the representative New England girl- 
hood of those days. We had all been fairly ed- 
ucated at public or private schools, and many 
of us were resolutely bent upon obtaining a better 
education. Very few were among iis without some 
distinct plan for bettering the condition of them* 
selves and those they loved. For the first time, 
our young women haa come forth f lom their home 
retirement in a throng, each with her own indi- 
vidual purpose. For twenty years or so, Lowell 
might have been looked upon as a rather select in- 
dustrial school for young people. The girls there 



MILL-GIRLS' MAGAZINES. 223 

were just such girls as are knocking at the doors 
of young women's colleges to-day. They had 
come to work with their hands, but they could not 
hinder the working of their minds also. Their 
mental activity was overflowing at every possible 
outlet. 

Many of them were supporting themselves at 
schools like Bradford Academy or Ipswich Semi- 
nary half the year, by working in the mills the 
other half. Mount Holyoke Seminary broke upon 
the thoughts of many of them as a vision of hope, 
— I remember being dazzled by it myself for a 
while, — and Mary Lyon's name was honored no- 
where more than among the Lowell mill-girls. 
Meanwhile they were improving themselves and 
preparing for their future in every possible way, 
by purchasing and reading standard books, by at- 
tending lectures and evening classes of their own 
getting up, and by meeting each other for reading 
and conversation. 

That they should write was no more strange 
than that they should study, or read, or think. 
And yet there were those to whom it seemed in- 
credible that a girl could, in the pauses of her 
work, put together v/ords with her pen that it 
would do to i^rint ; and after a while the asser- 
tion was circulated, through some distant news- 
paper, that our magazine was not written by our- 
selves at all, but by " Lowell lawyers." This 
seemed almost too foolish a suggestion to contra- 



224 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

diet, but the editor of the " Offering " thought it 
best to give the name and occupation of some of 
the writers by way of refutation. It was for this 
reason (much against my own wish) that my real 
name was first attached to anything I wrote. I 
was then book-keeper in the cloth-room of the 
Lawrence Mills. We had all used any fanciful 
signature we chose, varying it as we pleased. 
After I began to read and love Wordsworth, my 
favorite nom de plume was " Rotha." In the 
later numbers of the magazine, the editor more 
frequently made use of my initials. One day I 
was surprised by seeing my name in full in Gris- 
wold's "Female Poets:" — no great distinction, 
however, since there were a hundred names or so, 
besides. 

It has seemed necessary to give these gossip 
items about myself ; but the real interest of every 
separate life-story is involved in the larger life- 
history which is going on around it. We do not 
know ourselves without our companions and sur- 
roundings. I cannot narrate my workmates' sep- 
arate experiences, but I know that because of 
having lived among them, and because of hav- 
ing felt the beauty and power of their lives, I 
am different from what I should otherwise have 
been, and it is my own fault if I am not better 
for my life with them. 

In recalling those years of my girlhood at Low- 
ell, I often think that I knew then what real 
society is better j)erhaps than ever since. For in 



MILL-GIRLS' MAGAZINES. 225 

that large gathering together of j^onng woman- 
hood there were many choice natures — some of 
the choicest in all our excellent New England, 
and thei'e were no false social standards to hold 
them apart. It is the best society when people 
meet sincerely, on the ground of their deepest 
symjiathies and highest aspirations, without con- 
ventionality or cliques or affectation ; and it was 
in that way that these young girls met and became 
acquainted with each other, almost of necessity. 

There were all varieties of woman-nature among 
them, all degrees of refinement and cultivation, 
and, of course, many sharp contrasts of agreeable 
and disagreeable. It was not always the most 
cultivated, however, who were the most compan- 
ionable. There were gentle, untaught girls, as 
fresh and simple as wild flowers, whose unpre- 
tending goodness of heart was better to have than 
bookishness ; girls who loved everybody, and were 
loved by everybody. Those are the girls that I 
remember best, and their memory is sweet as a 
breeze from the clover fields. 

As I recall the throngs of unknown girlish 
forms that used to pass and repass me on the fa- 
miliar road to the mill-gates, and also the few 
that I knew so well, those with whom I worked, 
thought, read, wrote, studied, and worshiped, my 
thoughts send a heartfelt greeting to them all, 
wherever in God's beautiful, busy universe they 
may now be scattered : — 

"I am Had I have lived in the world with vou ! " 



XL 

READING AND STUDYING. 

My return to mill-work involved making ac- 
quaintance with a new kind of machinery. The 
spinning-room was the only one I had hitherto 
known anything about. Now my sister Emilie 
found a place for me in the dressing-room, beside 
herself. It was more airy, and fewer girls were in 
the room, for the dressing - frame itself was a 
large, clumsy affair, that occupied a great deal of 
space. Mine seemed to me as unmanageable as 
an overgrown spoilt child. It had to be watched 
in a dozen directions every minute, and even then 
it was always getting itself and me into trouble. 
I felt as if the half-live creature, with its great, 
groaning joints and whizzing fan, was aware of 
my incapacity to manage it, and had a fiendish 
spite against me. I contracted an unconquerable 
dislike to it ; indeed, I had never liked, and never 
could learn to like, any kind of machinery. And 
this machine finally conquered me. It was hu- 
miliating, but I had to acknowledge that there 
were some things I could not do, and I retired 
from the field, vanquished. 

The two things I had enjoyed in this room 



READING AND STUDYING. 227 

were that my sister was with me, and that our 
windows looked toward the west. When the work 
was running smoothly, we looked out together and 
quoted to each other all the sunset-poetry we 
could remember. Our tastes did not quite agree. 
Her favorite description of the clouds was from 
Pollok: — 

" They seemed like chariots of saints, 
By fiery coursers drawn ; as brightly hued 
As if the glorious, bushy, golden locks 
Of thousand cherubim had been shorn off, 
' And on the temples hung of morn and even." 

I liked better a translation from the German, 
beginning 

" Methinks it were no pain to die 
On such an eve, while such a sky 
O'ercanopies the west." 

And she generally had to hear the whole poem, 
for I was very fond of it; though the especial 
verse that I contrasted with hers was, — 

" There 's peace and welcome in yon sea 

Of endless blue tranquillity ; 

Those clouds are living thing's : 
^CeS Lf . . . . 

trace their veins of liquid gold, 

Sed And see them silently unfold 

Their soft and fleecy wings." 

Then she would tell me that my nature In- 
clined to quietness and harmony, while hers asked 
for motion and splendor. I wondered whether it 
really were so. But that huge, creaking frame- 
work beside us would continually intrude upon 



228 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

our meditations and break wp our discussions, and 
silence all poetry for us with its dull prose. 

Emilie found more profitable work elsewhere, 
and I found some that was less so, but far more 
satisfactory, as it would give me the openings of 
leisure which I craved. 

The paymaster asked, when I left, " Going 
where you can earn more money ? " 

" No," I answered, " I am going where I can 
have more time." 

" Ah, yes ! " he said sententiously, " time is 
money," But that was not my thought about it. 
" Time is education," I said to myself ; for that 
was what I meant it should be to me. 

Perhaps I never gave the wage - eai'ning ele- 
ment in work its due weight. It always seemed 
to me that the Apostle's idea about worldly pos- 
sessions was the only sensible one, — 

" Having food and raiment, let us be there- 
with content." 

If I could earn enough to furnish that, and 
have time to study besides, — of course we always 
gave away a little, however little we jAquer*" i* 
seemed to me a sufficiency. At this tii:i(j jl was^^ 
receiving two dollars a week, besides my board. •- 
Those who were earning much more, and were 
carefully " laying it up," did not appear to be 
any happier than I was. 

I never thought that the possession of money 
would make me feel rich : it often does seem to 



READING AND STUDYING. 2'Zb 

have an opposite effect. But tlien, I have never 
had the opportunity of knowing, by experience, 
how it does make one feel. It is something to 
have been spared the resjjonsibility of taking 
charge of the Lord's silver and gold. Let us be 
thankful for what we have not, as well as for 
what we have ! 

Freedom to live one's life truly is surely more 
desirable thaii any earthly acquisition or pos- 
session ; and at my new work I had hours of 
freedom every day. I never went back again to 
the bondage of machinery and a working-day 
thirteen hours long. 

The daughter of one of our neighbors, who also 
went to the same church with us, told me of a 
vacant place in the cloth-room, where she was, 
which I gladly secured. This was a low brick 
building next the counting-room, and a little 
apart from the mills, where the cloth was folded, 
stamped, and baled for the market. 

There were only half a dozen girls of us, who 
measured the cloth, and kept an account of the 
pieces baled, and their length in yards. It 
pleased me much to have something to do which, 
required the use of pen and ink, and I think 
there must be a good many scraps of verse buried 
among the blank pages of those old account-books 
of mine, that found their way there during the 
frequent half-hours of waiting for the cloth to be 
broujrht in from the mills. 



^oO A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

The only machinery in the room was a hy- 
draulic an^angemeut for pressing- the cloth into 
bales, managed by two or three men, one of 
whom was quite a poet, and a fine singer also. 
His hymns were frequently in request, on public 
occasions. He lent me the first volume of Whit- 
tier's poems that I ever saw. It was a small 
book, containing mostly Antislavery pieces. " The 
Yankee Girl " was one of them, fully to appre- 
ciate the spirit of which, it is necessary to have 
been a working-girl in slave-labor times. New 
England Womanhood crowned Whittier as her 
laureate from the day of his heroine 's spirited 
response to the slaveholder : — 

" 0, could ye have seen her — that pride of our girls — 
Arise and cast back the dark wealth of her curls, 
With a scorn in her eye that the gazer could feel, 
And a glance like the sunshine that flashes on steel ! 

*' ' Go back, haughty Southron! Go back ! for thy gold 
Is red with the blood of the hearts thou hast sold ! ' " 

There was in this volume another poem which 
is not in any of the later editions, the impression 
of which, as it remains to me in broken snatches, 
is very beautiful. It began with the lines 

" Bind up thy tresses, thou beautiful one, 
Of brown in the shadow, and gold in the sun." 

It was a refreshment and an inspiration to 
look into this book between my long rows of 
figures, and read such poems as " The Angel of 
Patience," " Follen," " Raphael," and that won- 



READING AND STUDYING. 231 

deifiiUy rendered " Hymn " from Lamartiue, that 
used to whisper itself through me after 1 had 
read it, like the echo of a spirit's voice : — 

" When tlie Breath Divine is flowing, 
Zephyr-like o'er all things going, 
And, as the touch of viewless fingers, 
Softly on my soul it lingers, 
Open to a breath the lightest. 
Conscious of a touch the slightest, — 



Then, O Father, Thou alone, 
From the sliadow of thy throne, 
To the sighing of my breast 
And its rapture answerest." 

I grew SO familiar with this volume that I felt 
acquainted with the poet long before I met 
Iiim. It remained in my desk-drawer for months. 
I thought it belonged to my poetic friend, the 
baler of cloth. But one day he informed me 
that it was a borrowed book ; he thought, how- 
ever, he should claim it for his own, now that he 
had kejjt it so long. Upon which remark I de- 
livered it up to the custody of his own conscience, 
and saw it no more. 

One day, towards the last of my stay at Lowell 
(I never changed my work-room again), this same 
friendly fellow-toiler handed me a poem to read* 
which some one had sent in to us from the count- 
ing-room, with the penciled comment, " Singu- 
larly beautiful." It was Poe's " Raven," which 
had just made its first appearance in some mag- 
azine. It seemed like an apparition in literature, 



232 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

indeed ; the sensation it created among the staid, 
measured lyrics of that day, with its flit of spec- 
tral wings, and its ghostly refrain of " Never- 
more ! " was very noticeable. Poe came to Lowell 
to live awhile, but it was after I had gone away. 

Our national poetry was at this time just be- 
ginning to be well known and appreciated. Bry- 
ant had published two volumes, and every school 
child was familiar with his " Death of the Flow- 
ers " and " God's First Temples." Some one lent 
me the " Voices of the Night," the only collection 
of Longfellow's verse then issued, I think. The 
" Footsteps of Angels " glided at once into my 
memory, and took possession of a permanent place 
there, with its tender melody. " The Last Leaf " 
and " Old Ironsides " were favorites with every- 
body who read poetry at all, but I do not think 
we Lowell girls had a volume of Dr. Holmes's 
poems at tliat time. 

" The Lady's Book " and " Graham's Maga- 
zine " were then the popular periodicals, and the 
mill-girls took them. I remember that the " nug- 
gets " I used to pick out of one or the other of 
them when I was quite a child were labeled with 
the sio-nature of Harriet E. Beecher. " Father 
Morris," and " Uncle Tim," and others of the 
delightful " May-Flower " sketches first appeared 
in this way. Irving's " Sketeh-Book " all read- 
ing people were supposed to have read, and I re- 
call the pleasure it was to me when one of my 



READING AND STUDYING. 233 

sisters came into possession of " Knickerbocker's 
History of New York." It was the first humor- 
ous book, as well as the first history, that I ever 
cared about. And I was pleased enough — for I 
was a little girl when my fondness for it began 
— to hear our minister say that he always read 
Diedrich Knickerbocker for his tired Monday's 
recreation. 

We were allowed to have books in the cloth- 
room. The absence of machinery permitted that 
privilege. Our superintendent, who was a man 
of culture and a Christian gentleman of the Puri- 
tan-school, dignified and reserved, used often to 
stop at my desk in his daily round to see what 
book I was reading. One day it was Mather's 
" Magnalia," which I had brought from the pub- 
lic libi-ary, with a desire to know something of 
the early history of New England. He looked a 
little surprised at the archaeological turn my mind 
had taken, but his only comment was, " A valua- 
ble old book that." It was a satisfaction to have 
a superintendent like him, whose granite princi- 
ples, emphasized by his stately figure and bear- 
ing, made him a tower of strength in the church 
and in the community. He kept a silent, kindly, 
rigid watch over the corporation-life of which he 
was the head ; and only those of us who were in- 
cidentally admitted to his confidence knew how 
caiefully we were guarded. 

AVe had occasional glimpses into his own well- 



234 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

ordered home-life, at social gatherings. His little 
daughter was in my infant Sabbath-school class 
from her fourth to her seventh or eighth year. 
She sometimes visited me at my work, and we had 
our frolics among the heaps of cloth, as if we 
were both children. She had also the same love 
of hymns that I had as a child, and she would sit 
by my side and repeat to me one after another 
that she had learned, not as a task, but because 
of her delight in them. One of my sincerest 
griefs in going off to the West was that I should 
see my little pupil Mary as a child no more. 
When I came back, she was a grown-up young 
woman. 

My friend Anna, who had procured for me the 
place and work beside her which I liked so much, 
was not at all a bookish person, but we had per- 
haps a better time together than if she had been. 
She was one who found the happiness of her life 
in doing kindnesses for others, and in helping 
them bear their burdens. Family reverses had 
brought her, with her mother and sistei's, to Low- 
ell, and this was one strong point of sympathy 
between my own family and hers. It was, indeed, 
a bond of neighborly union between a great many 
households in the young manufacturing city. 
Anna's manners and language were those of a 
lady, though she had come from the wilds of 
Maine, somewhere in the vicinity of Mount Des- 
ert, the very name of which seemed in those days 



READING AND STUDYING. 235 

to carry one into a wilderness of mountains and 
waves. We chatted together at our work on all 
manner of subjects, and once she astonished me 
by saying confidentially, in a low tone, " Do you 
know, I am thirty years old ! " She spoke as if 
she thought the fact implied something serious. 
My surprise was that she should have taken me 
into her intimate friendship when I was only sev- 
enteen. I should hardly have supposed her older 
than myself, if she had not volunteered the infor- 
mation. 

When I lifted my eyes from her tall, thin fig- 
ure to her fair face and somewhat sad blue eyes, 
I saw that she looked a little worn ; but I knew 
that it was from care for others, strangers as well 
as her own relatives ; and it seemed to me as if 
those thirty loving years were her rose-garland. 
I became more attached to her than ever. 

What a foolish dread it is, — showing unripeness 
rather than youth, — the dread of growing old ! 
For how can a life be beautified more than by its 
beautiful years ? A living, loving, growing spirit 
can never be old. Emerson says : — 

' ' Spring still makes spring in the mind, 
When sixty years are told ; " 

and some of us are thankful to have lived long 
enough to bear witness with him to that truth. 

The few others who measured cloth with us 
were nice, bright girls, and some of them remark- 
ably pretty. Our work and the room itself were 



236 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

so clean that in summer we could wear fresh mus- 
lin dresses, sometimes white ones, without fear of 
soiling them. This slight difference of apparel 
and our fewer work-hours seemed to give us a 
slight advantage over the toilers in the mills oppo- 
site, and we occasionally heard ourselves spoken 
of as " the cloth-room aristocracy." But that was 
only in fun. Most of us had served an appren- 
ticeship in the mills, and many of our best friends 
were still there, preferring their work because it 
brought them more money than we could earn. 

For myself, no amount of money would have 
been a temptation, compared with my precious 
daytime freedom. Whole hours of sunshine for 
reading, for walking, for studying, for writing, 
for anything that I wanted to do ! The days were 
so lovely and so long! and yet how fast they 
slipped away! I had not given up my dream of 
a better education, and as I could not go to school, 
I began to study by myself. 

I had received a pretty thorough drill in the 
common English branches at the grammar school, 
and at my emiiloyraent I only needed a little sim- 
ple arithmetic. A few of my friends were study- 
ing algebra in an evening class, but I had no 
fancy for mathematics. My first wish was to 
learn about English Literature, to go back to its 
very beginnings. It was not then studied even 
in the higher schools, and I knew no one who 
could give me any assistance in it, as a teacher. 



READING AND STUDYING. 237 

" Percy's Reliques " and " Chambers' Cyclopaedia 
of English Literature " were in the city library, 
and I used them, making extracts from Chaucer 
and Spensei*, to fix their peculiarities in my mem- 
ory, though there was only a taste of them to be 
had from the Cyclopsedia. 

Shakespeare I had read from childhood, in a 
fragmentary way. " The Tempest," and " Mid- 
summer Night's Dream," and " King Lear," I 
had swallowed among my fairy tales. Now I dis- 
covered that the historical plays, notably " Julius 
Caesar " and " Coriolanus," had no less attraction 
for me, though of a different kind. But it was 
easy for me to forget that I was trying to be a lit- 
erary student, and slip off from Belmont to Ven- 
ice with Portia to witness the discomfiture of 
Shylock ; although I did pity the miserable Jew, 
and thought he might at least have been allowed 
the comfort of his paltry ducats. I do not think 
that any of my stud3ang at this time was very 
severe ; it was pleasure rather than toil, for I 
undertook only the tasks I liked. But what I 
learned remained with me, nevertheless. 

With Milton I was more familiar than with 
any other poet, and from thirteen years of age to 
eighteen he was my preference. My friend Ange- 
line and I (another of my cloth-room associates) 
made the " Paradise Lost " a language-study in an 
evening class, under one of the grammar school 
masters, and I never open to the majestic lines, — 



238 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

" High on a throne of royal state, which far 
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, 
Or where the gorgeous east with richest hand 
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold," — 

without seeing Angeline's kindly, homely face out- 
lined thi'ough that magnificence, instead of the 
lineaments of the evil angel 

' ' by merit raised 
To that bad eminence." 

She, too, was much older than I, and a most ex- 
cellent, energetic, and studious young woman. I 
wonder if she remembers how hard we tried to get 

" Beelzebub — than whom, 
Satan except, none higher sat," 

into the limits of our grammatical rules, — not 
altogether with success, I believe. 

I copied passages from Jeremy Taylor and the 
old theologians into my note - books, and have 
found them useful even recently, in pi-eparlng 
compilations. Dryden and the eighteenth century 
poets genei-ally did not interest me, though I tried 
to read them from a sense of duty. Pope was an 
exception, however. Aphorisms from the " Essay 
on Man " were in as common use among us as 
those from the Book of Proverbs. 

Some of my choicest extracts were in the first 
volume of collected poetry I ever owned, a little 
red morocco book called " The Young Man's Book 
of Poetry." It was given me by one of my sisters 
when I was about a dozen years old, who rather 



READING AND STUDYING. 239 

apologized for the young man on the title-page, 
saying that the poetry was just as good as if he 
were not there. 

And, indeed, no young man could have valued 
it more than I did. It contained selections from 
standard poets, and choice ones from less familiar 
sources. One of the extracts was Wordsworth's 
" Sunset among the Mountains," from the " Ex- 
cursion," to read which, however often, always 
lifted me into an ecstasy. That red morocco book 
was my treasure. It traveled with me to the 
West, and I meant to keep it as long as I lived. 
But alas ! it was borrowed by a little girl out on 
the Illinois prairies, who never brought it back. 
I do not know that I have ever quite forgiven her. 
I have wished I could look into it again, often 
and often through the years. But perhaps I ought 
to be grateful to that little girl for teaching me to 
be careful about returning borrowed books myself. 
Only a lover of them can appreciate the loss of 
one which has been a possession from childhood. 

Young and Cowper were considered religious 
reading, and as such I had always known some- 
thing of them. The songs of Burns were in the 
air. Through him I best learned to know poetry 
as song. I think that I heard the " Cotter's Sat- 
urday Night " and " A man 's a man for a' 
that " more frequently quoted than any other 
poems familiar to my girlhood. 

Some of my work-folk acquaintances were reg- 



240 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

ular subscribers to " Blackwood's Magazine " and 
the " Westminster " and " Edinburgh " reviews, 
and they lent them to me. These, and Macaulay's 
" Essays," were a great help and delight. I had 
also the reading of the " Bibliotheca Sacra " and 
the " New Englander ; " and sometimes of the 
" North American Review." 

By the time I had come down to Wordsworth 
and Coleridge in my readings of English poetry, 
I was enjoying it all so much that I could not any 
longer call it study. 

A gift from a friend of Griswold's " Poets and 
Poetry of England " gave me my first knowledge 
of Tennj^son. It was a great experience to read 
" Locksley Hall " for the first time while it was 
yet a new poem, and while one's own young life 
was stirred by the prophetic spirit of the age that 
gave it birth. 

I had a friend about my own age, and between 
us there was something very much like what is 
called a " school-girl friendship,'' a kind of inti- 
macy supposed to be superficial, but often as deep 
and permanent as it is pleasant. 

Eliza and I managed to see each other every 
day ; we exchanged confidences, laughed and cried 
together, read, wrote, walked, visited, and studied 
together. Her dress always had an airy touch 
which I admired, although I was rather indifferent 
as to what I wore myself. But she would en- 
deavor to " fix me up " tastefully, while I would 



READING AND STUDYING. 241 

help her to put her compositions for the " Offer- 
ing " into proper style. She had not begun to go 
to school at two years old, repeating the same 
routine of study every j^ear of her childhood, as I 
had. When a child, I should have thought it al- 
most as much of a disgrace to spell a word wrong, 
or make a mistake in the multiplication table, as 
to break one of the Ten Commandments. I was 
astonished to find that Eliza and other friends 
had not been as particularly dealt with in their 
early education- But she knew her deficiencies, 
and earned money enough to leave her work and 
attend a day-school part of the year. 

She was an ambitious scholar, and she per- 
suaded me into studying the German language 
with her. A native professor had formed a class 
among young women connected with the mills, 
and we joined it. We met, six or eight of us, 
at the home of two of these young women, — a 
factory boarding-house, — in a neat little parlor 
which contained a piano. The professor was a 
music-teacher also, and he sometimes brought his 
guitar, and let us finish our recitation with a con- 
cert. More frequently he gave us the songs of 
Deutschland that we begged for. He sang the 
*' Erl-King " in his own tongue admirably. We 
went through FoUen's German Grammar and 
Reader : — what a choice collection of extracts 
that "Reader" was! We conquered the difficult 
gutturals, like those in the numeral " acht und 



242 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

achtzig " (the test of our pronouncing abilities) 
so completely that the professor told us a native 
really would understand us! At his request, I 
put some little German songs into English, which 
he published as sheet-music, with my name. To 
hear my woi-ds sung quite gave me the feeling of 
a successful translator. The professor had his 
own distinctive name for each of his pupils. Eliza 
was " Naivete," from her artless manners ; and 
me he called " Etheria," probably on account of 
my star-gazing and verse-writing habits. Cer- 
tainly there was never anything ethereal in my 
visible presence. 

A botany class was formed in town by a lit- 
erary lady who was preparing a school text-book 
on the subject, and Eliza and I joined that also. 
The most I recall about that is the delightful 
flower-hunting rambles we took together. The 
Linnaean system, then in use, did not give us a 
very satisfactory key to the science. But we 
made the acquaintance of hitherto unfamiliar wild 
flowers that grew around us, and that was the 
opening to us of another door towards tlie Beau- 
tiful. 

Our minister offered to instruct the young 
people of his parish in ethics, and my sister 
Emilie and myself were among his pupils. We 
came to regard Wayland's "Moral Science" (our 
text-book) as most interesting reading, and it 
furnished us with many subjects for thought and 
for social discussion. 



READING AND STUDYING. 243 

Carlyle's " Hero- Worship " brought us a start- 
ling and keen enjoyment. It was lent me by a 
Dartmouth College student, the brother of one of 
my room-mates, soon after it was first published 
in this country. The young man did not seem to 
know exactly what to think of it, and wanted 
another reader's opinion. Few persons could 
have welcomed those early writings of Carlyle 
more enthusiastically than some of us working- 
girls did. The veiy ruggedness of the sentences 
had a fascination for us, like that of climbing 
over loose bowlders in a mountain scramble to 
get sight of a wonderful landscape. 

My room-mate, the student's sister, was the 
possessor of an electrifying new poem, — " Fes- 
tus," — that we sat up nights to read. It does 
not seem as if it could be more than forty years 
since Sarah and I looked up into each other's 
face from the page as the lamplight grew dim, 
and said, quoting from the poem, — 

" Wlio can mistake great thoiig-hts ? " 

She gave me the volume afterwards, when we went 
West together, and I have it still. Its questions 
and conjectures were like a glimpse into the chaos 
of our own dimly developing inner life. The 
fascination of " Festus " was that of wonder, 
doubt, and dissent, with great outbursts of an 
overmastering faith sweeping over our minds aa 



I 



244 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

we read. Some of our friends thought it not 
quite safe i-eading ; but we remember it as one of 
the inspirations of our workaday youth. 

We read books, also, that boie directly upon 
the condition of humanity in our time. "The 
Glory and Shame of England " was one of them, 
and it stirred us with a wonderful and j)ainful 
interest. 

We followed travelers and explorers, — Layard 
to Nineveh, and Stephens to Yucatan. And we 
were as fond of good story-books as any girls that 
live in these days of overflowing libraries. One 
book, a character - picture from history, had a 
wide popularity in those days. It is a pity that 
it should be unfamiliar to modern girlhood, — 
Ware's "Zenobia." The Queen of Palmyra 
walked among us, and held a lofty place among 
our ideals of heroic womanhood, never yet oblit- 
erated from admiring remembrance. 

We had the delight of reading Frederika Bre- 
mer's " Home " and " Neighbors " when they were 
fresh from the fountains of her own heart ; and 
some of us must not be blamed for feeling as if 
no tales of domestic life half so charming have 
been written since. Perhaps it is partly because 
the home-life of Sweden is in itself so delight- 
fully unique. 

W^e read George Borrow's " Bible in Spain," 
and wandered with him among the gypsies to whom 



READING AND STUDYING. 245 

he seemed to belong. I have never forgotten a 
verse that this strange traveler picked up some- 
where among the Zineali : — 

"I '11 joyfully labor, both night and day, 
To aid my unfortunate brothers ; 
As a laundress tans her own face in the ray 
To cleanse the garments of others." 

It suggested a somewhat similar verse to my 
own mind. Why should not our washerwoman's 
work have its touch of poetry also ? — 

This tliought flashed by like a ray of light 
That brightened my homely labor : — 

The water is making my own hands white 
While I wash the robes of my neighbor. 

And how delighted we were with Mrs. Kirk- 
laiid's "A New Home: Who '11 Follow ? " the 
first real Westei-n book I ever read. Its genuine 
pioneer-flavor was delicious. And, moreover, it 
was a prophecy to Sarah, Emilie, and myself, who 
were one day thankful enough to find an " Aunty 
ParshalFs di.sh-kettle " in a cabin on an Illinois 
prairie. 

So the pleasantly occupied years slipped on, 
I still nursing my purpose of a more systematic 
course of study, though I saw no near possibility 
of its fulfillment. It came in an unexpected way, 
as almost everything worth having does come. I 
could never have dreamed that I was going to 
meet my opportunity nearly or quite a thousand 
miles away, on the banks of the Mississippi. And 



246 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

yet, with that strange, delightful consciousness of 
growth into a comprehension of one's self and of 
one's life that most young persons must occasion- 
ally have experienced, I often vaguely felt new 
heavens opening for my half-fledged wings to try 
themselves in. Things about me were good and 
enjoyable, but I could not quite rest in them ; 
there was more for me to be, to know, and to 
do. I felt almost surer of the future than of the 
present. 

If the dream of the millennium which brightened 
the somewhat sombie close of the first ten years 
of my life had faded a little, out of the very 
roughnesses of the intervening road light had 
been kindled which made the end of the second 
ten years glow with enthusiastic hope. I had 
early been saved from a great mistake ; for it is 
the greatest of mistakes to begin life with the ex- 
pectation that it is going to be easy, or with the 
wish to have it so. What a world it would be, if 
there were no hills to climb ! Our powers were 
given us that we might conquer obstacles, and 
clear obstructions from the overgrown human 
path, and grow strong by striving, led onward 
always by an Invisible Guide. 

Life to me, as I looked forward, was a bright 
blank of mystery, like the broad Western tracts of 
our continent, which in the atlases of those days 
bore the title of " Unexplored Regions." It was 
to be penetrated, struggled through ; and its dififi- 



READING AND STUDYING. 247 

culties were not greatly dreaded, for I had not 
lost 

" The dream of Doing, — 
The first bound in the pursuing." 

I knew that there was no joy like the joy of 
pressing forward. 



XII. 

FROM THE MERRIMACK TO THE MISSISSIPPI. 

The years between 1835 and 1845, which 
nearly cover the time I lived at Lowell, seem to 
me, as I look back at them, singularly interesting 
years. People were guessing and experimenting 
and wondering and prophesying about a great 
many things, — about almost everything. We 
were only beginning to get accustomed to steam- 
boats and railroads. To travel by either was 
scarcely less an adventure to iis younger ones 
than going up in a balloon. 

Phrenology was much talked about ; and nu- 
merous " professors " of it came around lecturing, 
and examining heads, and making charts of cra- 
nial " bumps." This was profitable business to 
them for a while, as almost everybody who in- 
vested in a " character " received a good one ; 
while many very commonplace people were flat- 
tered into the belief that they were geniuses, or 
might be if they chose. 

Mesmerism followed close upon phrenology ; 
and this too had its lecturers, who entertained the 
stronger j)ortion of their audiences by showing 



I 



FROM MIlRRIMAGK TO MISSISSIPPI. 249 

them how easily the weaker ones could be brought 
under an uncanny influence. 

The most widespread dekision of the time was 
Millerism. A great many persons — and yet not 
so many that I knew even one of them — believed 
that the end of the world was coming in the year 
1842 ; though the date was postponed from year 
to year, as the prophesy failed of fulfillment. 
The idea in itself was almost too serious to be 
jested about ; and yet its advocates made it so 
literal a matter that it did look very ridiculous to 
unbelievers. 

An irreverent little workmate of mine in the 
spinning-room made a string of jingling couplets 
about it, like this : — 

"Oh dear! oh dear! what shall we do 
In eighteen hundred and forty-two ? 

" Oh dear ! oh dear ! where shall we be 
In eighteen hundred and forty-three ? 

" Oh dear ! oh dear I we shall be no more 
In eighteen hundred and forty-four. 

" Oh dear ! oh dear ! we sha' n't be alive 
In eighteen hundred and forty-five." 

I thought it audacious in her, since surely she 
and all of us were aware that the world would 
come to an end some time, in some way, for every 
one of us. I said to myself that I could not have 
" made up " those rhymes. Nevertheless we all 
lau<rhed at them tojxether. 



260 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

A comet appeared at about the time of the 
Miller excitement, and also a very unusual illumi- 
nation of sky and earth by the Aui-ora Borealis. 
This latter occurred in midwinter. The whole 
heavens were of a deep rose-color — almost crimson 
— reddest at the zenith, and paling as it radi- 
ated towards the horizon. The snow was fresh 
on the ground, and that, too, was of a brilliant 
red. Cold as it was, windows were thrown up all 
around us for people to look out at the wonder- 
ful sight, I was gazing with the rest, and listen- 
ing to exclamations of wonder from surrounding 
unseen beholders, when somebody shouted from 
far down the opposite block of buildings, with 
startling effect, — 

*' You can't stand the fire 
In that great day ! " 

It was the refrain of a Millerite hymn. The 
Millerites believed that these signs in the sky were 
omens of the approaching catastrophe. And it 
was said that some of them did go so far as to put 
on white " ascension robes," and assemble some- 
where, to wait for the expected hour. 

When daguerreotypes were first made, when we 
heard that the sun was going to take everybody's 
portrait, it seemed almost too great a marvel to 
be believed. While it was yet only a rumor that 
such a thing had been done, somewhere across 
the sea, I saw some verses about it which im- 



FROM MERRIMACK TO MISSISSIPPI. 251 

pressed me mucli, but which I only partly remem- 
ber. These were the opening lines : — 

" Oh, what if thus our evil deeds 
Are mirrored on the sky, 
And every line of our wild lives 
Daguerreotyped on high ! " 

My sister and I considered it quite an event 
when we went to have our daguerreotypes taken, 
just before we started for the West. The photo- 
graph was still an undeveloped mystery. 

Things that looked miraculous then are com- 
monplace now. It almost seems as if the children 
of to-day could not have so good a time as we did, 
science has left them so little to wonder about. 
Our attitude — the attitude of the time — was 
that of children clinibing their dooryard fence, 
to watch an approaching show, and to conjectui'e 
what more remarkable spectacle could be follow- 
ing behind. New England had kept to the quiet 
old-fashioned ways of living for the first fifty 
years of the Republic. Now all was expectancy. 
Changes were coming. Things were going to 
happen, nobody could guess what. 

Things have happened, and changes have come. 
The New England that has grown up with the 
last fifty years is not at all the New England that 
our fathers knew. We speak of having been 
reai'ed under Puritanic influences, but the tradi- 
tionary sternness of these was much modified, even 
in the childhood of the generation to which I 



252 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

belong. We did not recognize the grim features 
of the Puritan, as we used sometimes to read 
about him, in our parents or relatives. And yet 
we were children of the Puritans. 

Everything that was new or strange came to us 
at Lowell. And most of the remarkable people 
of the day came also. How strange it was to see 
Mar Yohanan, a Nestorian bishop, walking through 
the factory yard in his Oriental robes with more 
than a child's wonder on his face at the stir and 
rush of everything ! He came from Boston by 
railroad, and was present at a wedding at the 
clergyman's house where he visited. The rapid- 
ity of the simple Congregational service aston- 
ished him. 

" What ? marry on railroad, too ? " he asked. 

Dickens visited Lowell while I was there, and 
gave a good report of what he saw in his " Amer- 
ican Notes." We did not leave our work even to 
gaze at distinguished strangers, so I missed see- 
ing him. But a friend who did see him sketched 
his profile in pencil for me as he passed along the 
street. He was then best known as " Boz." 

Many of the prominent men of the country 
were in the habit of giving Lyceum lectures, and 
the Lyceum lecture of that day was a means of 
education, conveying to the people the results of 
study and thought through the best minds. At 
Lowell it was more patronized by the mill-people 
than any mere entertainment. We had John 



FROM MERRIMACK TO MISSISSIPPI. 253 

Quincy Adams, Edward Everett, John Pierpont, 
and Ralph Waklo Emerson among our lecturers, 
with numerous distinguished clergymen o£ the 
day. Daniel Webster was once in the city, trying 
a law case. Some of my girl friends went to the 
court-room and had a glimpse of his face, but I 
just missed seeing him. 

Sometimes an Englishman, who was studying 
our national institutions, would call and have a 
friendly talk with us at our work. Sometimes it 
was a traveler from the South, who was interested 
in the same way. I remember one, an editor and 
author from Georgia, who visited our Improve- 
ment Circle, and who sent some of us " Offering " 
contributors copies of his books after he had re- 
turned home. 

One of the pleasantest visitors that I recall was 
a young Quaker woman from Philadelphia, a 
school-teacher, who came to see for herself how 
the Lowell girls lived, of whom she had heard 
so much. A deep, quiet friendship grew up be- 
tween us two. I wrote some verses for her when 
we parted, and she sent me one cordial, charm- 
ingly-written letter. In a few weeks I answered 
it ; but the response was from another person, a 
near relative. She was dead. But she still re- 
mains a real person to me ; I often recall her fea- 
tures and the tones of her voice. It was as if a 
beautiful spirit from an invisible world had slipped 
in among us, and quickly gone back again. 



254 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

It was an event to me, and to my immediate 
friends among the mill-girls, when the poet Whit- 
tier came to Lowell to stay awhile. I had not 
supposed that it would be my good fortune to 
meet him ; but one evening when we assembled 
at the " Improvement Circle," he was there. The 
" Offering " editor. Miss Harriet Farley, had lived 
in the same town with him, and they were old 
acquaintances. 

It was a warm, summer evening. I recall the 
circumstance that a number of us wore white 
dresses ; also that I shrank back into myself, and 
felt much abashed when some verses of mine were 
read by the editor, — with others so much better, 
however, that mine received little attention. I 
felt relieved ; for I was not fond of having my 
productions spoken of, for good or ill. He com- 
mended quite highly a poem by another member 
of the Circle, on " Pentucket," the Indian name 
of his native place, Haverhill. My subject was 
" Sabbath Bells." As the Friends do not believe 
in " steeple-houses," I was at liberty to imagine 
that it was my theme, and not my verses, that 
failed to interest him. 

Various other papers were read, — stories, 
sketches, etc., and after the reading there was a 
little conversation, when he came and spoke to 
me. I let the friend who had accompanied me 
do my part of the talking, for I was too much 
overawed by the presence of one whose poetry I 






FROM MERRIMACK TO MISSISSIPPI. 255 



had so long admired, to say a great deal. But 
from that evening we knew each other as friends ; 
and, of course, the day has a white mark among 
the memories of my Lowell life. 

Mr. Whittier's visit to Lowell had some politi- 
cal beai'ing upon the antislavery cause. It is 
strange now to think that a cause like that should 
not always have been our country's cause, — our 
country, — our own free nation ! But antislavery 
sentiments were then regarded by many as trai- 
torous heresies ; and those who held them did not 
expect to win popularity. If the vote of the mill- 
girls had been taken, it would doubtless have been 
unanimous on the antislavery side. But those 
were also the days when a woman was not ex- 
pected to give, or even to have, an opinion on 
subjects of public intei-est. 

Occasionally a young girl was attracted to the 
Lowell mills through her own idealization of the 
life there, as it had been reported to her. Mar- 
garet Foley, who afterwards became distinguished 
as a sculptor, was one of these. She did not re- 
main many months at her occupation, — which I 
think was weaving, — soon changing it for that of 
teaching and studying art. Those who came as 
she did were usually disappointed. Instead of an 
Arcadia, they found a place of matter-of-fact toil, 
filled with a company of industrious, wide-awake 
girls, who were faithfully improving their oppor- 
tunities, while looking through them into avenues 



256 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

toward profit and usefulness, more desirable yet. 
Tt has always been the way of the steady-minded 
New Englander to accept the present situation, — 
but to accept it without boundaries, taking in also 
the larger prospects — all the heavens above and 
the earth beneath — towards which it opens. 

The movement of New England girls toward 
Lowell was only an impulse of a larger move- 
ment which about that time sent so many people 
from the Eastern States into the West. The 
needs of the West were constantly kept befoi-e us 
in the churches. We were asked for contribu- 
tions for Home Missions, which were willingly 
given ; and some of us were appointed collectors 
of funds for the education of indigent young men 
to become Western Home Missionary preachers. 
There was something almost pathetic in the read- 
iness with which this was done by young girls 
who were longing to fit themselves for teachers, 
but had not the means. Many a girl at Lowell 
was working to send her brother to college, who 
had far more talent and character than he ; but 
a man could preach, and it was not " orthodox " 
to think that a woman could. And in her devo- 
tion to him, and her zeal for the spread of Chris- 
tian truth, she was hardly conscious of her own 
sacrifice. Yet our ministers appreciated the in- 
telligence and piety of their feminine parishion- 
ers. An agent who came from the West for 
school-teachers was told by our own pastor that 



FROM MERRIMACK TO MISSISSIPPI. 257 

five hundred could easily be furnished from 
among Lowell mill-girls. Many did go, and they 
made another New England in some of our West- 
ern States. 

The missionary spirit was strong among my 
companions. I never thought that I had the 
right qualifications for that work ; but I had a 

, desire to see the prairies and the great rivers of 
the West, and to get a taste of free, primitive life 
among pioneers. 

Before the year 1845, several of my friends had 
emigrated as teachers or missionaries. One of 

' the editors of the ''Operatives' Magazine " had 
gone to Arkansas with a mill-girl who had worked 
beside her among the looms. They were at an 
Indian mission — to the Cherokees and Choctaws. 
I seemed to breathe the air of that far South- 
west, in a spray of yellow jessamine which one of 
those friends sent me, pressed in a letter. Peo- 
ple wrote very long letters then, in those days of 
twenty-five cent postage. 

Rachel, at whose house our German class had 
been accustomed to meet, had also left her work, 
and had gone to western Virginia to take charge 
of a school. She wrote alluring letters to us 
about the scenery there ; it was in the neighbor- 
hood of the Natural Bridge. 

My friend Angeline, with whom I used to read 
*' Paradise Lost," went to Ohio as a teacher, and 
returned the following year, — for a very bi'ief 



258 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

visit, however, — and with a husband. Another 
acquaintance was in Wisconsin, teaching a pio- 
neer school. Eliza, my intimate companion, was 
about to be married to a clergyman. She, too, 
eventually settled at the West. 

The event which brought most change into my 
own life was the marriage of my sister Emilie. 
It involved the breaking up of our own little I 
family, of which she had really been the " house- ' 
band," the return of my mother to my sisters at 
Beverly, and my going to board among strangers, 
as other girls did. I found excellent quarters and 
kind friends, but the home-life was ended. ' 

My sister's husband was a grammar school 
master in the city, and their cottage, a mile or 
more out, among the open fields, was my frequent 
refuge from homesickness and the general clatter. 
Our partial separation showed me how much I | 
had depended upon my sister. I had really let ! 
her do most of my thinking for me. Henceforth i 
I was to trust to my own resources. I was no 
longer the " little sister " who could ask what to do, > 
and do as she was told. It often brought me a feel- J 
ing of dismay to find that I must make up my ♦ 
own mind about things small and great. And ' 
yet I was naturally self-reliant. I am not sure [ 
but self-reliance and dependence really belong : 
together. They do seem to meet in the same char- j 
acter, like other extremes. | 

The health of Emilie'a husband failing, after i 



FROM MERRIMACK TO MISSISSIPPI. 259 

a year or two, it was evident tliat he must change 
his employment and his residence. He decided to 
go with his brother to Illinois and settle upon a 
prairie farm. Of course his wife and baby boy 
must go too, and with the announcement of this 
decision came an invitation to me to accompany 
them. I had no difficulty as to my response. It 
was just what I wanted to do. I was to teach a 
district school ; but what there was beyond that, I 
could not guess. I liked, to feel that it was all as 
vague as the unexplored regions to which I was 
going. My friend and room-mate Sarah, who 
was preparing herself to be a teacher, was invited 
to join us, and she was glad to do so. It was all 
quickly settled, and early in the spring of 1846 
we left New England. 

When I came to a realization of what I was 
leaving, when good-bys had to be said, I began 
to feel very sorrowful, and to wish it was not to 
be. I said positively that I should soon return, 
but underneath my protestations I was afraid that 
I might not. The West was very far off then, — 
a full week's journey. It would be hard getting 
back. Those I loved might die ; I might die 
myself. These thoughts passed through my mind, 
though not through my lips. My eyes would 
sometimes tell the story, however, and I fancy 
that my tearful farewells must have seemed ridic- 
ulous to many of my friends, since my going was 
of my own cheerful choice. 



260 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

The last meeting of the Iinprovement Circle 
before I went away was a kind of surprise party 
to me. Several original poems were read, ad- 
dressed to me personally. I am afraid that I re- 
ceived it all in a dumb, undemonstrative way, for 
I could not make it seem real that I was the per- 
son meant, or that I was going away at all. But 
I treasured those tributes of sympathy after- 
wards, under the strange, spacious skies where I 
sometimes felt so alone. 

The editors of the " Offering " left with me a 
testimonial in money, accompanied by an acknow- 
ledgment of my contributions during several 
years ; but I had never dreamed of pay, and 
did not know how to look upon it so. I took it 
gratefully, however, as a token of their apprecia- 
tion, and twenty dollars was no small help to- 
ward my outfit. Friends brought me books and 
other keepsakes. Our minister gave me D'Aubi- 
gne's " History of the Reformation " as a parting 
gift. It was quite a circumstance to be "going 
out West." 

The exhilaration of starting off on one's first 
long journey, young, ignorant, buoyant, expec- 
tant, is unlike anything else, unless it be youth 
itself, the real beginning of the real journey — 
life. Annoyances are overlooked. Everything 
seems romantic and dream-like. 

We went by a southei'ly route, on account of 
starting so early in the season ; there was snow 



FROM MERRIMACK TO MISSISSIPPI. 261 

on the ground the day we left. On the second 
day, after a moonlight night on Long Island 
Sound, we were floating down the Delaware, be- 
tween shores misty-green with budding willows ; 
then (most of us seasick, though I was not) we 
were tossed across Chesapeake Bay ; then there 
was a railway ride to the Alleghanies, which gave 
us glimpses of the Potomac and the Blue Ridge, 
and of the lovely scenery around Harper's Ferry ; 
then followed a stifling night on the mountains, 
when we were packed like sardines into a stage- 
coach, without a breath of air, and the passengers 
were cross because the baby cried, while I felt in- 
wardly glad that one voice among us could give 
utterance to the general discomfort, my own part 
of which I could have borne if I could only have 
had an occasional peep out at the mountain-side. 
After that it was all river-voyaging, down the 
Monongahela into the Ohio, and up the Missis- 
sippi, 

As I recall this part of it, I should say that it 
was the perfection of a Western journey to travel 
in early spring by an Ohio River steamboat, — 
such steamboats as they had forty years ago, 
comfortable, roomy, and well ordered. The com- 
pany was social, as Western emigrants were wont 
to be when there wei-e not so very many of them, 
and the shores of the river, then only thinly 
populated, were a constantly shifting panorama 
of wilderness beauty. I have never since seen a 



262 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

combination of spring colors so delicate as those 
shown by the nplifted forests of the Ohio, where 
the jiure white of the dogwood and the peach- 
bloom tint of the red-bud (Judas tree) were con- 
trasted with soft shades of green, almost endlessly 
various, on the unfolding leafage. 

Contrasted with the Ohio, the Mississippi had 
nothing to show but breadth and muddiness. More 
than one of us glanced at its level shores, edged 
with a monotonous growth of cottonwood, and 
sent back a sigh towards the banks of the Mer- 
rimack, But we did not let each other know what 
the sigh was for, until long after. The breaking- 
up of our little company when the steandioat 
landed at Saint Louis was like the ending of a 
pleasant dream. We had to wake up to the fact 
that by striking due east thirty or forty miles 
across that monotonous greenness, we should 
reach our destination, and must accept whatever 
we should find there, with such grace as we could. 

What we did find, and did not find, there is not 
room fully to relate hei'e. Ours was at first the 
roughest kind of pioneering experience ; sucli as 
persons brought up in our well-to-do New England 
could not be in the least prepared for, though 
they might imagine they were, as we did. We 
were dropped down finally upon a vast green 
expanse, extending hundreds of miles north and 
south through the State of Illinois, then known 
as Looking-Glass Prairie. The nearest cabin to 



FROM MERRIMACK TO MISSISSIPPI. 263 

our own was about a mile away, and so small that 
at that distance it looked like a shingle set up 
endwise in the grass. Nothing else was in sight, 
not even a tree, although we could see miles and 
miles in every direction. There were only the 
hollow blue heavens above us and the level green 
prairie around us, — an iuunensity of intense 
loneliness. We seldom saw a cloud in the sky, 
and never a pebble beneath our feet. If we could 
have picked up the commonest one, we should 
have treasured it like a diamond. Nothing in 
nature now seemed so beautiful to us as rocks. 
We had never dreamed of a world without them ; 
it seemed like living on a floor without walls or 
foundations. 

After a while we became accustomed to the vast 
sameness, and even liked it in a lukewarm way. 
And there were times when it filled us with emo- 
tions of grandeur. Boundlessness in itself is im- 
i:)ressive ; it makes us feel our littleness, and yet 
releases us from that littleness. 

The grass was always astir, blowing one way, 
like the waves of the sea ; for there was a steady, 
almost an unvarying wind from the south. It 
was like the sea, and yet even more wonderful, 
for it was a sea of living and growing things. 
The Spirit of God was moving upon the face of 
tlie earth, and breathing everything into life. We 
were but specks on the great landscape. But God 
was above it all, penetrating it and us with his 



201 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

infinite warmth. The distance from human be- 
ings made the Invisible One seem so near ! Only 
Nature and ourselves now, face to face with Him ! 

We could scarcely have found in all the world 
a more complete contrast to the moving crowds 
and the whir and dust of the City of Spindles, 
than this unpeopled, silent prairie. 

For myself, I know that I was sent in upon my 
own thoughts deeper than I had ever been before. 
I began to question things which I had never 
before doubted. I must have reality. Nothing 
but transparent truth would bear the test of this 
great, solitary stillness. As the prairies lay open 
to the sunshine, my heart seemed to lie bare be- 
neath the piercing eye of the All-Seeing. I may 
say with gratitude that only some superficial rub- 
bish of acquired opinion was scorched away by 
this searching light and heat. The faith of my 
childhood, in its simplest elements, took firmer 
root as it found broader room to grow in. 

I had many peculiar experiences in my log- 
cabin school-teaching, which was seldom more than 
three months in one place. Only once I found 
myself among New England people, and there I 
remained a year or more, fairly reveling in a re- 
turn to the familiar, thrifty ways that seem to 
me to shape a more comfortable style of living 
than any under the sun. " Vine Lodge " (so we 
named 'the cottage for its embowering honey- 
suckles), and its warm-hearted inmates, with my 



FROM MERRIMACK FO MISSISSIPPI. 265 

little white schoolhouse under the oaks, make one 
of the brightest of my Western memories. 

Only a mile or two away from this pretty retreat 
there was an edifice towards which I often looked 
with longing. It was a seminary for young wo- 
men, probably at that time one of the best in the 
countr}^ certainly second to none in the West. 
It had originated about a dozen years before, 
in a plan for Western collegiate education, organ- 
ized by Yale College graduates. It was thought 
that women as well as men ought to share in the 
benefits of such a plan, and the result was Monti- 
cello Seminary. The good man whose wealth had 
made the institution a possibility lived in the 
neighborhood. Its trustees were of the best type 
of pioneer manhood, and its pupils came from all 
parts of the South and West. 

Its Principal — I wonder now that I could have 
lived so near her for a year without becoming ac- 
quainted with her ; — but her high local rej^uta- 
tion as an intellectual woman inspired me with 
awe, and I was foolishly diffident. One day, how- 
ever, upon the persuasion of my friends at Vine 
Lodge, who knew my wishes for a higher educa- 
tion, I went with them to call upon her. We 
talked about the matter which had been in my 
thoughts so long, and she gave me not only a 
cordial but an urgent invitation to come and en- 
roll myself as a student. There were arrange- 
ments for those who could not incur the cui*rent 



266 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

expenses, to meet them by doing part of the do- 
mestic work, and of these I gladly availed myself. 
The stately limestone edifice, standing in the midst 
of an original growth of forest-trees, two or three 
miles from the Mississippi Rivei', became my home 
— my student-home — for three years. The bene- 
fits of those three years I have been reaping ever 
since, I trust not altogether selfishl3^ It was al- 
ways my desire and my ambition as a teacher, to 
help my pupils as my teachers had helped me. 

The course of study at Mouticello Seminary 
was the broadest, the most college-like, that I have 
ever known ; and I have had experience since in 
several institutions of the kind. The study of 
mediaeval and modern history, and of the history 
of modern philosophy, especially, opened new vistas 
to me. In these our Principal was also our teacher, 
and her method was to show us the tendencies of 
thought, to put our minds into the great current 
of human affairs, leaving us to collect details as 
we could, then or afterward. We came thus to 
feel that these were life-long studies, as indeed 
they are. 

The course was somewhat elective, but her ad- 
vice to me was, not to omit anything because I 
did not like it. I had a natural distaste for 
mathematics, and my recollections of my struggles 
with trigonometry and conic sections are not alto- 
gether those of a conquering heroine. But my 
teacher told me that my mind had need of just 



FROM MERRIMACK TO MISSISSIPPI. 267 

that exact sort of discipline, and I think she was 
right. 

A habit of indiscriminate, unsystematized read- 
ing, such as I had fallen into, is entirely foreign 
to the scholarly habit of mind. Attention is the 
secret of real acquirement ; but it was months 
before I could command my own attention, even 
when I was intei'ested in the subject I was exam- 
ining. It seemed as if all the pages of all the 
books I had ever read were turning themselves 
over between me and this one page that I wanted 
to understand. I found that mere reading does 
not by any means make a student. 

It was more to me to come into communication 
with my wise teacher as a friend than even to re- 
ceive the wisdom she had to impart. She was dig- 
nified and reticent, but beneath her reserve, as is 
often the case, was a sealed fountain of sympathy, 
which one who had the key could easily unlock. 
Thinking of her nobleness of character, her piety, 
her learning, her power, and her sweetness, it 
seems to me as if I had once had a Christian 
Zenobia or Hypatia for my teacher. 

We speak with awed tenderness of our unseen 
guardian angels, but have we not all had our 
guiding angels, who came to us in visible form, 
and, recognized or unknown, kept beside us on our 
difficult path until they had done for us all that 
they could ? It seems to me as if one had suc- 
ceeded another by my side all through the years, 



268 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

— always some one whose influence made my heart 
stronger and my way clearer ; though sometimes it 
has been only a little child that came and laid its 
hand into my hand as if I were its guide, instead 
of its being mine. 

My dear and honored Lady-Principal was surely 
one of my strong guiding angels, sent to meet me 
as I went to meet her upon my life-road, just at 
the point where I most needed her. For the one 
great thing she gave her pupils, — scope, often 
quite left out of woman's education, — I especially 
thank her. The true education is to go on for- 
ever. But how can there be any hopeful going on 
without outlook ? And having an infinite outlook, 
how can progress ever cease ? It was worth while 
for me to go to those Western prairies, if only for 
the broader mental view that opened upou me in 
my pupilage there. 

Duiing my first year at the seminary I was 
appointed teacher of the Preparatory Dei^artment, 

— a separate school of thirty or forty girls, — with 
the opportunity to go on with my studies at the 
same time. It was a little hard, but I was very 
glad to do it, as I was vuiwilling to receive an 
education without rendering an equivalent, and I 
did not wish to incur a debt. 

I believe that the postponement of these ma- 
turer studies to my early woraanhootl, after I had 
worked and taught, was a benefit to me. I had 
found out some of my special ignorances, what 



FROM MERRIMACK TO MISSISSIPPI. 269 

the things were which I most needed to know. I 
had learned that the book-knowledge I so much 
craved was not itself education, was not even cul- 
ture, but only a help, an adjunct to both. As I 
studied more earnestly, I cared for fewer books, 
but those few made themselves indispensable. It 
still seems to me that in the Lowell mills, and. 
in my log-cabin schoolhouse on the Western prai- 
ries, I received the best part of my early educa- 
tion. 

The great advantage of a seminary course to 
me was that under my broad-minded Principal I 
learned what education really is : the penetrat- 
ing deeper and rising higher into life, as well 
as making continually wider explorations ; the 
rounding of the whole human being out of its 
nebulous elements into form, as planets and suns 
are rounded, until they give out safe and steady 
light. This makes the process an infinite one, not 
possible to be completed at any school. 

Returning from the West immediately after 
my graduation, I was for ten years or so a teacher 
of young girls in seminaries much like my own 
Alma Mater. The best result to me of that ex- 
perience has been the friendship of my pupils, 
— a happiness which must last as long as life 
itself. 

A book must end somewhere, and the natural 
boundary of this narrative is drawn with my leav- 
insr New England for the West. I was to outline 



270 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

the story of my youth for the young, though I 
think many a one among them might tell a story 
far more interesting than mine. The most beauti- 
ful lives seldom find their way into print. Per- 
haps the most beautiful part of any life never 
does. I should like to flatter myself so. 

I could not stay at the West. It was never 
really home to me there, and my sojourn of six or 
seven years on the prairies only deepened my love 
and longing for the dear old State of Massachu- 
setts. I cam.e back in the summer of 1852, and 
the unwritten remainder of my sketch is chiefly 
that of a teacher's and writer's experience ; re- 
garding which latter I will add, for the gratifica- 
tion of those v/ho have desired them, a few j)er- 
sonal particulai'S. 

While a student and teacher at the West I was 
still writing, and much that I wrote was published. 
A poem printed in " Sartain's Magazine," sent 
there at the suggestion of the editor of the " Low- 
ell Offering," was the first for which I received 
remuneration — five dollars. Several poems writ- 
ten for the manuscript school journal at Monti- 
cello Seminary ai-e in the "• Household " collection 
of my verses, among them those entitled " Eureka," 
" Hand in Hand witli Angels," and " Psyche at 
School." These, and various others written soon 
after, were printed in the " National Era," in re- 
turn for which a copy of the paper was sent me. 
Nothing further was asked or expected. 



FROM MERRIMACK TO MISSISSIPPI. 271 

The little song " Hannah Binding Shoes " — 
written immediately after my return from the 
West, — was a study from life — though not from 
any one life — in my native town. It was brought 
into notice in a peculiar way, — by my being ac- 
cused of stealing it, by the editor of the maga- 
zine to which 1 had sent it with a request for the 
usual remuneration, if accepted. Accidentally or 
otherwise, this editor lost my note and signature, 
and then denounced me by name in a newspaper 
as a " literary thiefess ; " having printed the verses 
with a noTH de phime in his magazine without my 
knowledge. It was awkward to have to come to 
my own defense. But the curious incident gave 
the song a wide circulation. 

I did not attempt writing for money until it 
became a necessity, when my health failed at 
teaching, although I should long before then have 
liked to spend my whole time with my pen, could 
I have done so. But it was imperative that I 
should have an assured income, however small ; 
and every one who has tried it knows how uncer 
tain a support one's pen is, unless it has become 
very famous indeed. My life as a teacher, how- 
ever, I regard as part of my best preparation for 
whatever I have since written. I do not know 
but I should recommend five or ten years of 
teaching as the most profitable apprenticeship for 
a young person who wished to become an author. 
To be a good teacher implies self-discipline, and 



272 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

a book written without something of that sort of 
personal preparation cannot be a very valuable 
one. 

Success in writing may mean many different 
things. I do not know that I have ever reached 
it, except in the sense of liking better and better 
to write, and of finding expression easier. It is 
something to have won the privilege of going on. 
Sympathy and recognition are worth a great deal ; 
the power to touch human beings inwardly and 
nobly is worth far more. The hope of attaining 
to such results, if only occasionally, must be a 
writer's best insjiiration. 

So far as successful publication goes, perhaps 
the first I considered so came when a poem of 
mine was accepted by the " Atlantic Monthly." 
Its title was " The Rose Enthroned," and as the 
poet Lowell was at that time editing the maga- 
zine I felt especially gratified. That and another 
poem, " The Loyal Woman's No," written early in 
the War of the Rebellion, were each attributed to 
a different person among our prominent poets, the 
" Atlantic " at that time not giving authors' sig- 
natures. Of course I knew the unlikeness ; never- 
theless, those who made the mistake paid me an 
unintentional compliment. Compliments, how- 
ever, are very cheap, and by no means signify 
success. I have always regarded it as a better 
ambition to be a true woman than to become a 
successful writer. To be the second would never 



FROM MERRIMACK TO MISSISSIPPI. 273 

have seemed to me desirable, without also being 
the first. 

lu concluding, let me say to you, dear girls, for 
whom these pages have been written, that if I 
have learned anything by living, it is this, — that 
the meaning of life is education ; not through 
book -knowledge alone, sometimes entirely with- 
out it. Education is growth, the development of 
our best possibilities from within outward ; and 
it cannot be carried on as it should be except in 
a school; just such a school as we aU find our- 
selves in — this world of human beings by whom 
we are surrounded. The beauty of belonging to 
this school is that we cannot learn anything in it 
by ourselves alone, but for and with our feUow- 
pupils, the wide earth over. We can never ex- 
pect promotion here, except by taking our place 
among the lowest, and sharing their difficulties 
until they are removed, and we all become grad- 
uates together for a higher school. 

Humility, Sympathy, Helpfulness, and Faith 
are the best teachers in this great university, and 
none of us are well educated who do not accept 
their training. The real satisfaction of living is, 
and must forever be, the education of all for each, 
and of each for all. So let us all try together to 
be good and faithful women, and not care too 
much for what the world may think of us or of 
our abilities ! 

My little story is not a remarkable one, for I 



274 A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD. 

have never attempted remarkable things. In the 
words of one of our honored elder writers, given 
in reply to a youthful aspii-ant who had asked 
for some points of her " literary career," — "I 
never had a career." 



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